Proposed 3-Year Degree Generates Enthusiasm and Doubt
Dylan Tulk
He/Him
Staff Writer
12/11/24
Provost Nathaniel Bowditch is determined to stay positive about a proposed 96-credit applied bachelor’s degree, despite misleading press, a scathing message from the curriculum committee, and an onslaught of questions to clear up across campus.
“[These degrees are] definitely not for everyone,” Bowditch said. “It’s a very specific major career path for students who know what career they want, but need to cut costs and workload so they can enter high-demand jobs faster.”
Initially, all faculty were asked if they wanted to participate in creating an applied bachelor’s degree, which would take students 3 years and 96 credits to complete. “A lot of the faculty said it’s impossible,” Bowditch said. Some said they didn’t want to be a part of the experiment, but five programs wanted to try it: Business Administration, Cybersecurity, Outdoor Adventure Leadership, Police Studies, and Robotics.
After a PSU press release on November 8th, many people got the impression that the applied bachelor’s degrees were approved and ready to launch. However, they are not official yet. The curriculum committee has yet to complete their review, though PSU’s accreditors approved the proposal and the faculty vote was positive.
In an interview on December 6th, the Curriculum Committee said they “played no part in the writing or distribution of said announcement/press release.” But they did “compose and distribute an objection to it” addressed to PSU’s senior administration.
The curriculum committee sent an email to Bowditch and PSU President Donald Birx. “The President’s message, sent on November 8th, undermines shared governance and inaccurately represents the status and process for 96-credit degrees at PSU,” it read. “We think it is urgent that the university issues a statement correcting the error and ensures the accuracy of any future communications.”
Bowditch responded directly with an email to the Curriculum Committee and all faculty. He accepted there had been a miscommunication, clarified the situation, and thanked the committee for their transparency.
“We struggled with this,” Bowditch said. “We implied that the approval process was complete. It is not. There’s still more work to be done.” He said there had been a lot of enthusiasm and drive to advertise as soon as PSU could, but it was not his intention for people to think it was “all done and dusted.”
Bowditch said he understood people “thought [the announcement] was premature.” He explained he has since communicated with his faculty colleagues. “I think the faculty said, ‘well, that’s fine, but you could have been more explicit that there’s still [work to be done],’ and I accept that.” Bowditch and Birx have since been clarifying the matter. “I made clear to the faculty, and I made clear in an interview on NHPR… there’s still a curriculum review,” Bowditch said.
Despite this hiccup, Bowditch feels confident that the 3-year applied bachelor’s will be approved soon. But the curriculum committee said that there are still many steps to approval, especially given the “faculty governance” at PSU. Each curricular change or addition must be approved by the Curriculum Committee.
Nic Helms, Coordinator of the English Department, did not want to be involved in creating a 96-credit applied bachelor’s for the English major. Helms, whose preferred pronouns are they/them, explained that English is already a flexible major that can be applied to many other majors and minors. “An applied bachelor’s degree doesn’t really have the room for the interdisciplinary pairings our current students are most interested [in],” they said.
Despite the benefits of making higher education more affordable, Helms stressed the need to gather data, and had questions for PSU. “Do students want three-year degrees? Are they able to find jobs when they graduate? Do they have sufficient time at PSU to develop their Habits of Mind?” they asked.
Bowditch said there is not yet data as to whether these proposed degrees will address retention and boost recruitment. He understood that a lot of the faculty and their programs did not want to be involved in creating these new degrees, because it “takes a lot of work,” and involved large credit cuts which for some majors would not be feasible.
The cuts necessary to shave a standard 120-credit degree down to the 96-credit applied bachelor’s were “proportional,” Bowditch explained. Electives and gen-eds were downsized, career-specific classes were emphasized: not weakening the major, but focusing it. “[In my four year degree] I took… courses that I knew had no bearing on what I wanted to do, but they were just really cool,” Bowditch said. “That kind of freedom is one of the things that you forgo if you do this kind of degree.”
Although the proposed applied bachelor’s degrees step away from traditional liberal arts values, they will produce fully skilled future employees. The specific programs participating in the applied bachelor’s were “designed specifically with the needs of that industry in mind,” Bowditch said. Faculty talked to the people who were hiring in those fields and asked what skills they wanted from new graduates. They then incorporated that information into their program design.
Mark Fischler, Program Coordinator for Criminal Justice, voted in favor of creating the applied bachelor’s in Police Studies. To develop the 3-year program for Police Studies, faculty met with the policing industry. Fischler said his department did great work and covered all the areas that the industry wanted.
Going forward, Criminal Justice will need to work with admissions to find student populations not interested in a 4-year degree, but still interested in advancing their understanding of work in the police industry.
“Any bit of school is better than no school,” Fischler said, for many police officer jobs don’t require much prior education. Although Fischler hopes that people in the 3-year applied bachelor’s will feel moved to go on for a fourth year. “In terms of the wealth of worldly perspectives that you could gain in our program of 96 versus the 120, I think it’s a deeper degree to go to the 120,” he added.
Matt Cheney, Associate Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies, said it’s “odd” to call the 96-credit degrees applied bachelor’s degrees. NECHE, who approved the 96-credit degrees, were “firm that we need to make it clear to students that these are not bachelor’s degrees, but we are going ahead with the misleading name of ‘applied bachelor’s,’” Cheney said.
Though NECHE ultimately approved the “applied bachelor’s” title, according to NECHE President Lawrence Schall, Cheney said “the possibilities for confusion are high,” He and other faculty are concerned that no one seems to be clear on the difference between the 96-credit applied bachelor’s degree and the standard 120-credit bachelor’s degree.
“We have been very open from the start that this is going to take all of us doing this together,” Bowditch said. He described the process of creating these applied bachelor’s degrees as a “mystery” and an “experiment,” a time where everyone has to learn from each other and embrace challenges. Bowditch acknowledged that “there are bumps and people are concerned,” but overall he said from his point of view he was satisfied with the process, and that people were “willing to try something that might be really good for some of our students.”
Cheney said the proposed applied bachelor’s degrees seem “interesting and useful,” and that no one is criticizing the programs themselves, which faculty have worked hard on. But the degrees were brought to faculty “not primarily out of student desire, faculty interest, or philosophical purpose… [but to] generate more revenue by attracting students who would not otherwise attend PSU,” he said.
Plymouth State hopes to launch applied bachelor’s degrees in the Fall of 2025.