I oppose the Board of Higher Education’s acceptance of proposals for 90-credit baccalaureate degrees, which would reduce the traditional 120-credit baccalaureate degree to shorter and weaker credentials.

These reduced-credit baccalaureate degrees are being sold under the guise of affordability. But the answer to the college affordability crisis is to address costs and restore adequate state funding — not to give the next generation of Massachusetts students less education and call it access. That is not innovation. It is education shrinkflation.

A “reduced” 90-credit baccalaureate degree may close doors.

A baccalaureate degree should open doors to employment, graduate study, professional school, licensure, and long-term advancement. A “reduced” 90-credit baccalaureate degree puts that promise at risk.

The danger is not abstract. The New England Commission of Higher Education’s own guidance requires institutions to warn students that “some graduate programs, professional schools, and employers might not accept a reduced-credit baccalaureate degree.” That warning should give every policymaker pause.

The greatest risk falls on the most vulnerable students.

Financially vulnerable students are the very students most likely to choose the shorter path because it appears faster and cheaper. Yet they are also the students already facing fewer opportunities for social and economic advancement, and this watered-down degree may very well keep their opportunities limited. High school seniors, first-generation students, and working-class families may not be in a position to assess consequences that may not appear for years.

A “choice” under financial pressure is not real choice. It is constraint dressed up as flexibility.
The New England Commission of Higher Education’s guidance also requires institutions to disclose that students who complete a reduced-credit baccalaureate degree and later seek a traditional baccalaureate degree or other undergraduate programs “may not be eligible for federal financial aid.”

That warning is essential. Students who later need additional credits for graduate school, professional school, licensure, or employment may have to pay out of pocket or take on loans. Financially vulnerable students may be priced out of opportunities that remain available to students with family resources.

This would create a two-tier system: a full baccalaureate degree for students who can afford the safer path, and a reduced baccalaureate credential for students under the greatest financial pressure. Sending the most financially vulnerable students toward a weaker and potentially irreversible credential will widen inequities in the Commonwealth.

Liberal arts education matters more in the age of AI.

In an economy being reshaped by artificial intelligence, the purpose of a baccalaureate degree cannot be reduced to short-term job training. Students will not simply enter one profession and remain there unchanged. They will need to adapt, learn, change direction, and exercise judgment across multiple transitions in their working lives.

That is why the breadth of a baccalaureate degree matters. Graduates need the human capacities AI cannot replace: critical thinking, ethical reasoning, clear communication, creativity, judgment, adaptability, collaboration across difference, and interdisciplinary thinking. These are not extras. They are central to the value of a baccalaureate degree.

Those capacities are built through general education and liberal arts study: writing, literature, history, philosophy, languages, social sciences, mathematics, natural sciences, the arts, and interdisciplinary inquiry. They prepare students not only for employment, but for civic participation and a lifetime of professional adaptation.

Massachusetts should lower financial barriers, not expectations.

We do not need to reduce the baccalaureate degree to address affordability. We need to address the cost structure directly.

Massachusetts already has better models emerging for addressing college affordability. Students have access to tuition-free community college and programs that eliminate tuition for many families. Those are policy solutions that preserve the breadth of education while reducing financial barriers.

The Commonwealth should expand those opportunities through greater investment, not ask students to accept a diminished baccalaureate degree.

Massachusetts should not lower the ceiling on what students can achieve. It should lower the financial barriers that keep them from reaching it.

Source: NECHE, Guidance for Proposals for Reduced-Credit Baccalaureate Degrees (May 2026).