It takes most college students at least four years to earn a bachelor’s degree. Christie Williams finished in three months.
The North Carolina human resources executive spent two months racking up credits through web tutorials after work in 2024, then raced through 11 online classes at the University of Maine at Presque Isle in four weeks. Later that year, she went back to earn her master’s – in just five weeks. The two degrees cost a total of just over $4,000.
Since then, she has coached a thousand other students on how to speed through the state college, shaving off years and thousands of dollars from the usual cost of a degree.
“Why wouldn’t you do that?” Williams asked. “It’s kind of a no-brainer if you know about it.”
Many U.S. schools have been experimenting with ways to speed up traditional college programs to reduce the burgeoning cost and help students move into the workforce faster. Some offer three-year bachelor’s programs, reducing the number of credits needed for a diploma by one quarter. Many more allow students to enroll in college classes while still in high school.
But the breakneck pace of the fastest online programs concerns some academics, who say there is a big difference in what students can learn in weeks or months compared with three or more years.
The phenomenon – sometimes referred to as degree hacking, college speed runs or hyperaccelerated degrees – has spawned a cottage industry of influencers making videos about how quickly they earned their degrees and encouraging others to follow suit.
Supporters of the approach tout it as an affordable, convenient way for people to earn credentials they need for their careers. Others, including some online students and academic officials, expressed concern about what the super-accelerated students are missing, and whether a quick path devalues degrees.
Said every worker ever to every new hire.
Any place that you could work for that would say this is run by fucking idiots, who are likely doing a techically legal, elaborate fraud.
And every time they’ve been wrong in my experience. Sure there’s some learning to actually apply and use it, but it’s never been straight useless.
The reason why you hear this so often is because academia is designed to teach students based on a logical, reasonable curriculum. The curriculum will be mostly well-thought-out and cover all the important topics.
Then you take someone who followed this perfectly reasonable path and you place them in front of the total shitshow that is most businesses. Everything they think they know won’t be applicable because most of the time, logic and reason were not what drove adoption of any given tool or practice.
“Alright so this system is called ‘testing’ but you need to get two seniors to sign off plus a good reason to push an update.”
/What about this system?/
“Oh, that’s where we do all are actual testing, just be careful not to break it too much.”
/Alright, what is it called?/
“Uhm, I think its called prod or something like that. The root password is written on a sticky note on the upper right corner of John’s monitor.”
/Who is John, the senior dev or something?/
“What? Hahaha no, John is just the summer intern.”
In hard science degrees like chemistry and molecular biology the employer is actually milking new hires for the skills you got during your PhD, for a few years. These skills are very much not useless.
The article is about Bachelors and Masters degrees. If one day PhD degrees become useless, kill the University.
Yeah I’ve worked with those people and they are terrible at their jobs.
Indeed.
But they still demand the degree
Never once said that to a new hire. I have lamented that not all schools teach some basic things, but I’ve never thought they were taught the wrong things, just not everything needed.