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.
This sort of reminds me of that Kanye West School Spirit Skit about learning:
You keep it going man, you keep those books rolling
You pick up those books you’re going to read
And not remember, and you roll man
You get that associate’s degree, okay
Then you get your bachelor’s, then you get your master’s
Then you get your master’s masters
Then you get your doctorate
You go man, and then when everybody says quit
You show them those degrees man
When everybody says, "hey, you’re not working
“You’re not making any money”
You say, “look at my degrees and you look at my life
Yeah, I’m 52, so what?”
Hate all you want
But I’m smart, I’m so smart, and I’m in school
These guys are out here, huh
Making money all these ways, and I’m spending mine to be smart
You know why?
Because when I die, buddy
You know what’s gonna keep me warm?
That’s right, those degrees
This reads like someone heard “the unexamined life is not worth living” and responded with “nuh uh, why should I learn anything if I’m fighting for survival” like an education doesn’t help at all, might as well condemn everyone to a life of subsistence farming. The only reason we’re able to specialize into roles like rappers and doctors and engineers is because of education. Don’t mistake the mechanisms of academic bureaucracy and economics with the pursuit of truth and knowledge.
I originally interpreted the lyrics as a view of commodified education where the prerequisite for a lot of jobs nowadays require a degree or two just to get past the AI review process.
I didn’t mean to come off as knocking the pursuit of higher education. I mean I probably deserve it quoting a Kanye song! My wife has applied for her Masters next year, and I’m looking into the process of upgrading my advanced diploma into a degree myself. It just makes me laugh with frustration at how the ladder for success keeps adding rungs the higher you climb it.