PPI Senior Fellow Paul Weinstein’s new paper supporting three-year degree models was the subject of a Houston Chronicle article. Weinstein argues that “the four-year model is based on tradition and little else”:
A researcher at Johns Hopkins University says he has the cure for America’s growing student debt crisis: cut a year off college.
Paul Weinstein, director of the university’s graduate program in public management, is the latest to push for a three-year degree model. He argues in a new paper for the Progressive Policy Institute that American universities should shift their standards away from the arguably arbitrary four years it takes to graduate.
Students could save 25 percent by attending college for three-quarters of the time, Weinstein argues. They could also save on interest on student loans, and existing grants could be streamlined to save them even more, he writes.
“People are realizing we’re reaching a point where the system is no longer going to be viable.
People understand we’ve got to do something,” Weinstein said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “A number of ideas are being put out there, so there’s a real acknowledgment.”
Read the entire story on The Houston Chronicle.