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.
If I had this in my college years - impossible since we had no Internet available yet at all - I’d’ve been laughing. Stay home, stay online, and hack all the waking day? BSc in no time.
A dear friend lived near the uni in her home town, and so lived with her mom, rent-free, and just went all-out on coursework. In 3 years she got and paid to receive a BA. She earned enough for a BSc too, but didn’t pay the fee for convocation and so doesn’t have it.
Three years. Wow, would that have been awesome.
I did my BS in person in three years. It wasn’t particularly difficult, just a bit more work.
Correspondence courses have been around for decades. You probably could have asked them for multiple courses at once and done them as fast as you like.
https://youtube.com/@9monthcollegegrad
And this guy channel shows you how. Might be the reason behind this.
Yeah it seems like the only thing they really learned was how to grift and exploit systems, not an ounce of appreciation for the creation, synthesis, or archival of knowledge. Like the degree equivalent of a speed reading scam, all surface no understanding or retention. There’s no time for spaced repetition which I think is critical for long term retention.
Appreciation for the creation, synthesis, or archival of knowledge was already gone, this is just cutting out the fluff.
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 degreesThis 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.
If you can complete a masters degree in five weeks, it’s a degree mill and not a real degree. The average in-person masters degree requires 30 credit hours with 24 credits being above 500 level (graduate classes). Let’s do the math:
If you take 15 credits per semester (5 classes typically), that would be 15 hours of class time for 12 weeks. For a 3 credit class this would be 3 hours per week of class time. If you condense this down to 5 weeks, that would be 36 hours of class time per week for five weeks.
But remember, this is only half the required credits. So you have to multiply this by 2, leading to 72 hours per week of just class time.
This does NOT include any outside work. Typically, 500 level classes give homework that can take 5-10 hours per week since it is a graduate level class. Let’s assume five hours to be generous.
That would mean for a full semester (15 credit hours at 5 classes) one would be looking at 15 hours of class work per week plus 25 hours of homework/projects per week (5 classes x 5 hours of work per class). For a total of 40 hours per week.
Condensing this down to 5 weeks would multiple this number by 2.4 (5 weeks instead of 12 weeks). And then multiplying it again by 2 since you would have to do both semesters in five weeks. That would be 192 hours of work per week for five weeks. There are 144 hours in a week. These places are degree mills.
But, but, if… degree mills exist… then…
Recruiters would have to do actual work, to vet that!
Clearly you haven’t been on LinkedIn enough to understand how the job market actually works.
Same way it’s always worked. Your best shot is by knowing someone in the field who can get you in the door for an interview.
But you don’t understand, we live in a meritocracy that rewards hard work and skill!
I largely agree, but one situation I can think of where condensing the work makes sense is experienced professionals who already meet the learning outcomes. Their goal is to prove that they know the material, then have a degree to show as proof, not to actually learn the material.
Kind of, but that would be a fault in the system that ideally would be charged. Maybe with some sort of verification to ensure they have the skills already. Maybe that’s even what this is abusing and they’re not examining enough / tolerant of LLMs yet. But agreed that is something a flaw with credentials
Anything that can be cheated by LLMs can Also be automated away with the same tech, rendering it worthless
This should always be an option. making sitting through and paying for years of courses is predatory and locks so many people out
I did a summer “mini-mester” for my undergrad Fluid Mechanics class where the class was condensed into 4 or 6 weeks but you met every day and it was FUCKING BRUTAL even though I was only doing that one course. I can’t imagine doing that for a full 15hrs of coursework. This smells more like a click through the classwork once randomly, figure out the right answers from the online quiz when they pop up at the end, then click the right answers the next time type of situation but for a whole program.
How this got accredited (if it actually is) is beyond me.
Agreed, I did something similar where I did 3 courses in 7 weeks and that was by far the worst and most stressful time of my entire degree. Anything more probably would have caused a nervous breakdown.
You did an intesive for fluid mechanics?! Are you insane, or a masochist?
He just really likes pressure.
I go with the flow.
You seem like a dynamic person
To make it worse, I was working full time at the time. It was the only way I could get to the next course in the schedule since certain classes were only offered in certain semesters so if I had missed that window, I would have been set back a year. It was awful.
Corollary: if you have the capability to complete the requirements in a short period you should be allowed to.
The problem is that many “legit” colleges are already degree mills, albeit at a slower pace. In the US at least, colleges are run like businesses. More students means more money. As long as they can maintain an okay reputation, they’ll churn as many students through as they can. The places that let you fast-track like this are just taking the next logical step, and letting the mask slip a little further. The whole system is broken; this is just another symptom.
Not every institution is this way. In my area, there are one or two schools that consistently produce people who actually know something. But it’s a pretty small percentage, all things considered, and I expect the overton window will gradually lessen expectations at those places over time as well.
Certainly not untrue. Many schools have gone the way of business. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s only a small percentage that are real degrees these day but it’s definitely lower than it should be.
I’m guessing some areas/industries are better or worse. Mine seems pretty bad, at least in my area. Being involved in hiring co-ops and new grads has given me a good taste for what the expectations are like, and it’s not great. So my view is probably a bit dismal.
That is a good point. You are probably right that it is area based. My degrees were in physics and to my knowledge, there aren’t too many online degrees for it. It’s pretty hard to fake your knowledge in this area. Even if you could, you’ll be found out quickly once starting a job.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s only a small percentage that are real degrees these day but it’s definitely lower than it should be.
I agree. I think a lot of degrees are still real degrees, but the entire ecosystem has been degraded to the point that quality across the board has diminished. So, the most “rigorous” degrees now are equivalent to a run-of-the-mill degree a generation ago and so forth. Ultimately, the run-of-the-mill degrees of yesteryear are now just diploma mill degrees.
I hate to say it, but a lot of it is e-learning and online degrees. It’s a lot harder to engage with material, with a class, or with the professor themselves behind a screen hundreds of miles away. Even when you put everything into the work, it still just is not as engaging because you don’t have the same dynamic because you can’t just drop by your professor’s office for office hours or get the same level of help or group learning. In undergrad, I used to help others in my classes, and vice-versa, while also going to office hours to clear up details. Online, if it’s not impossible, it’s at least orders of magnitude more difficult. So, the quality of learning drops a ton.
If I go back for another Master’s or a Doctorate, I will only do in person classes.
When young people face a system explicitly designed to extract as much wealth out of them as possible, nerfing their economic potential well into adulthood via crushing debt, is such a response really that unexpected?
Another reason I don’t have to worry about the next generation coming for my job.
Wait until it’s your pilot and first officer holding the degree from the degree mill.
As far as I know, you don’t get flight hours from online courses.
They’re concerned they won’t be able to keep fucking people with four years of fees funded by FAFSA loans they end up defaulting on
True but it’s impossible to default on FAFSA loans. That stuff hangs over people until it’s paid or until they die.
I’m in that boat, but so far there havn’t been any consequences besides ruined credit
So as a consequence of those awful predatory student loans, you can’t buy a house or finance a car or get approved for an apartment or loan?
Lol like I was ever gonna buy a home anyways
But apartment rental? Car?
I’m currently without a car and have an apartment already. It wasn’t my choice to default, I can’t afford to pay
Oh right, I forgot they changed that
Did it used to be escapable by filing bankruptcy or something?
Yep
I think the headline is wrong. It’s not that educators are alarmed because educators don’t offer a college degree in a few months. These are scam programs run by and taken by scammers.
And it’s pretty easy to see how this will burn the students who thought that they had saved a couple of years. If an employer asks for a copy of your transcript, what are you going to give them? … Or maybe you’ll falsify a transcript, but if you were going to do that then why did you pay $4,000 for your college diploma anyway?
Of course it’s partly the student’s fault, but it’s much more that money making scam artists who created the scams fault. It’s easy to prey on young people who think they have a quick path to cash, and it should be a crime to do so.
If an employer asks for a copy of your transcript, what are you going to give them?
That’s half the joke, though. The employers are using automated tools to sift for staff. Why would prospective staff not use automated tools to bump themselves up in the queue for a job?
Or maybe you’ll falsify a transcript, but if you were going to do that then why did you pay $4,000 for your college diploma anyway?
Because then it’s not a “false” transcript. It’s real and true, fully accredited and identical to a transcript issued by a four year school.
Of course it’s partly the student’s fault
This is a structural failure. It isn’t the fault of any single (non-billionaire) individual. As we pull more and more humans out of the bureaucratic chain and dump more and more automation onto lowest-bidder third parties, we accumulate technical debt. That technical debt exposes vulnerabilities in our bureaucratic systems. And then people naturally move in to exploit those vulnerabilities when they can’t get what they need out of a normally functional bureaucracy.
Do employers ask for transcripts? I’ve never had that happen before, and I’d find it incredibly odd if I got that request.
I had 1 employer ask for transcripts. I told him my university does not keep transcripts for students over 30 ago… archived records can be searched for a large fee with no guarantee records would be found. So i told them no transcripts. They hired me anyway.
I’m amazed at how many employers who hire graduates from my lab do ZERO due diligence or even ask me for an opinion. Six figure jobs.
You won’t be able to remember anything you learned if you whoosh on by. You should suffer at least a little bit from learning it, then it’ll stick much better.
Honestly a lot of education doesn’t stick either way. Repetition and living the lessons is what really makes learning stick.
I’m of two minds about this. So many jobs out there require a college degree when the work itself doesn’t really require a college degree to do. People who can’t afford to go to college but are able to do the work are locked out of that more comfortable life. This makes it easier to get that foot in the door.
At the same time, you learn A LOT about life and people in those 3 or 4 years at college. It’s a shame for someone to miss out on that experience. Also, this speed run absolutely could not work for a STEM degree.
There should be regulations on what degrees and certificates employers can ask for, and costs for those degrees should be imposed on employers who demand them
I regret going to college, the speedrunners have the right to get the credential they need
I didn’t get any credential and I consider college one of the better things I did as a young adult. Learned a lot, experienced a bunch of cool things (and people) that make me a more rounded person, and I paid almost nothing out of pocket. (Thanks FAFSA)
I keep saying it about AI written essays, but it applies here: College as we know it is bullshit and I hope this technology sparks the fire that burns it down.
The business model of quasi-requiring all young people to spend 4 years going into massive debt for the privilege of mostly repeating high school needs to die.
This shit about “become a well-rounded individual” also needs to die. That nonsense came about in the mid-20th century when it seemed industry, automation and electrical gadgetry was going to free us of toil, that in the future, George Jetson spends 3 hours a day, 3 days a week putting his feet up on his desk, so schools should teach art and music and literature classes to give people healthy hobbies so they know what to do with all this time they have. Wash that through the baby boomer intellect and it comes out “EXPLAIN THE THEMES IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS OR DIE A DITCH DIGGER.”
No such reduction in toil has happened. Artificial, gaseous toil has been created that expands to take up all available time.
We cling to this idea that “You are young. This is school time. You learn until you’re adult. When adult, you stop learn and start work. Never school again only work.” Which is the dumbest thing ever. We should offer all kinds of classes to all ages of people. You should be able to take a sociology class as a 38 year old man as casually as you can take yoga. Formal courses of study should be for earning certifications. You want to fly a plane? You need to complete this entire syllabus and take and pass this lengthy practical test so that we’re sure you won’t negligently crash into a neighborhood. You want to be a civil engineer? You need to complete this entire syllabus and pass this lengthy practical test so that we’re sure you won’t negligently sign off on a building that will collapse.
Humanities classes, arts and crafts, fine arts, culinary skills…this stuff needs to be available to anyone who wants them and not tacked onto technical training as a way to wring more money out of students.
As a victim of the education system, I’m totally in favor of starting from first principals and redesigning the whole system from the ground up.
I disagree with a lot of what you are saying. I actually think it is very important to be well-rounded individuals and think general electives should be required (even though I absolutely hated them when I was in college). There is a reason why left-leaning people are more likely to have a college education and right-leaning people are less likely to have a college education. It isn’t because people on the left are smart enough to go to college or have the money to, it’s that more move to the left afterwards because going to college teaches you about life outside your small area and teaches you about people who are different from you. The same thing happens in humanities classes, whether you take them at college or not. They broaden your experience outside of just technical stuff. I think that is very important to building a society of people who care about other people and who want to make the world better for others besides themselves.
I also think you have it wrong about “That nonsense came about in the mid-20th century when it seemed industry, automation and electrical gadgetry was going to free us of toil.” Universities were almost COMPLETELY about creating well-rounded people for a thousand years. It is only in the last hundred or so years that college has been about creating a targeted workforce. The first trade school wasn’t “invented” until 1823, and they didn’t become a big thing until after WWII in the 1940s. Universities pumping out engineers became a thing with land-grant schools in the late 1880s. Basically, the industrial revolution in the 1800s shifted college from creating well-rounded people to being focused on careers. “Majors” weren’t invented until 1885 (at Indiana University, which seems weird to me that it was invented there). Before that, you just took a whole bunch of electives based on what you were interested in or whatever your advisor was interested in. In the 1600s when Harvard and Yale were built, they were built for the reason you specifically say came about in the 20th century.
“This was an especially English ideal, realized in the colleges that made up the universities at Oxford and Cambridge. There, students studied, lived, and worshiped in communities with their teachers—and they would do the same at Harvard and Yale. In that way, education became not merely a training of mind or a preparation for profession, but a comprehensive experience meant to develop character, to develop the whole human being in all its dimensions- intellectual, moral, personal.”
It is true that requiring a general education as part of a set curriculum came about in the early-20th century, but that’s only because so many people were only going to college to get professional skills that schools needed to figure out a way to structure and standardized what was never structured or standardized in the past.
I do agree with you that we should make available to anyone at any age humanities classes. And I do agree trade/certification schools are an awesome way to create a better life for yourself or simply to get to do thing you want to do with your life. I also agree that requiring going into massive debt at expensive universities just to get basic jobs needs to die… but I want it to die by having universities be free to attend so anyone can have access to those basic jobs while also having access to a life-broadening experience.
The “well rounded person” shit is only ever given as a justification for forcing STEM majors to pay for liberal arts courses. I’ve never seen it go the other way, and it should. For every credit hour a STEM major spends in a humanities course, a liberal arts major should have to spend in a technical course.
Because guess what? That “just technical stuff” is the society we live in. Your ability to put current events into context because you studied the collapse of the Roman Empire won’t stop you from bleeding to death from multiple puncture wounds to the face, throat and chest caused by the rhinestones you glued to the hub of your steering wheel, turning your airbag into a claymore mine. You might not have crashed at all if you’d have taken your car to the shop when it started squealing every time you stepped on the brake pedal, you were relieved when it stopped that on its own.
The amount of staggering stupidity I’ve seen out of allegedly educated people…
The “well rounded person” shit is only ever given as a justification for forcing STEM majors to pay for liberal arts courses. I’ve never seen it go the other way, and it should. For every credit hour a STEM major spends in a humanities course, a liberal arts major should have to spend in a technical course.
Absolutely! I say this as a Comp Sci major who loves the humanities (and almost studied History). General education should encompass introductions to both the STEM and humanities areas. It is equally frustrating when I can’t walk through a 7th grade level algebraic function with someone with a Master’s degree in International Relations and when I can’t reference a fairly common part of mythology with a software engineer.
For every credit hour a STEM major spends in a humanities course, a liberal arts major should have to spend in a technical course.
You mean like how a History major at Purdue is required to take 5 Science courses, while an Engineering student is required to take 5 Gen Ed courses (only 3 of which need to be in Humanities)?
Expecting students to pay thousands for each course for vague “personal enrichment” is unreasonable and is just gatekeeping job credentials.
The question I’d like to ask is, do you need an expensive big formal institution like a university for general purpose personal enrichment? What alternitives could work? What do they look like? Student debt and GPAs surely can’t be the only way
I kinda agree. The problem is college became the way to get a job and it was never meant for that. Everything used to be las and then majors pulled off into their own schools because there was just to much to learn in the actual major. If someone is going to do research or education then they are going to need that broad grounding in things outside the main field but like every job should not need that. An LAS school I went to people talked about how at one point it only had a few majors. Pre law, pre med, theology, math, and sciences.
“The way to get a job.”
The way to get certain jobs, like doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer. Professions.
Don’t put education on some kind of pedestal. The very few people who were wealthy enough to attempt that shit had servants. They were rich enough to pursue the capstone of Maslowe’s pyramid. Nearly no one else is. The rest of us require a trade or profession to make ends meet. Until you solve scarcity, one way or another, reject as decadent the image of the angelic lofty scholar who learns for the sake of learning.
Until you solve scarcity, one way or another, reject as decadent the image of the angelic lofty scholar who learns for the sake of learning.
No, fuck that. I will continue to consider learning for its own sake among the most interesting and important things a person can do.
As adorable as that is, hunger and cold have ways of asserting themselves.
yeah that is exactly what im saying. it was never meant for every job to require it but it kinda became that way at some point. Never should have happened.
Completely lost sight of the purpose of education, which has nothing to do with being an effective corporate drone… unless you get a business degree, in which case 4 weeks is too long.
The point of paying for a college degree is to get a job. Education can be done for free, or the coat of printing out pirated textbooks at most. We don’t need institutions to learn
For your own sake, I hope you don’t actually believe this.
They’re right, cry about it
I like the concept but got burned hard by my experience going last decade. It’s way too expensive to just go for self enrichment. If you have motivation you can teach yourself. It’s never been easier, and you could hire a tutor to help you through at places for a tiny fraction of the price. Big institutions generally are breaking down and not working right.
When conservatives say that folks can teach themselves they’re hoping for the exact opposite.
Because not everyone can “teach themselves.” In fact, almost nobody can, otherwise we’d all be geniuses and not a bunch of dumb apes.
You kinda do for hard stuff. There’s lots of stuff where just reading a book isn’t enough to learn the material.
It’s been gone for a long time. “They literally just need a certificate” sums up the whole point of the education system as it actually operates, not the fantasy version we wish it was
People like saying lately “the purpose of a system is what is does” or something like that, so if we’re being realistic here you’re on to something.
Pretty much. I’m totally disillusioned with the education system and I want something totally diffrent
There is no “fantasy,” just indifference. I have no clue what everyone else is doing, but I didn’t fight my way from homelessness and into college “to get a job.”
I dont know how I feel about this.
On one hand, degrees are somewhat good for education in lots of industries.
On the other hand, I would fire someone instantly if they had cheated their degree like this.
Degrees are also very expensive.
I guess if it was a useless degree then it wouldn’t matter in the first place.
why would you fire them for this? that seems absurd. I make pretty good money and I don’t have a degree at all
Honesty is my problem with it. If they were open about it I wouldn’t care. But if they hid it and were hired because of the degree I’d fire them almost regardless of their work.
It’s something I value because dishonest people are usually quite horrible in my life experience.
My assumption is that they would tell you where it’s from, because normally the school’s name is attached to the degree, right? it wouldn’t be their fault if you didn’t catch it
We are all arguing different hypotheticals. My problem is my personal experiences.
One of them was a rapist. The other was a high level tech salesman child abuser. So I’m 2 for 2 and my opinions are skewed forever.
Thats because you have the sellable skills, which is the most important thing. Degree is helpful in some areas, essential in others and has no use everywhere else (outside of proving that a person is capable of learning and persevering).
Cheating is not a sellable skill, and a huge red flag.
How is it cheating? Who is being cheated? Out of what?
Reading the article, it sounds like these students still need to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the material.
Cheating is absolutely a sellable skill.
Ok, you got me there. Probably not though if you try to lie to your potential employer.
Degrees are very expensive in the us* most European countries the cost is much less. I think liberation of the yoke in the us is liberating to be honest. I think going to higher education physically however is more than just doing the content, but also doing the soft stuff — learning how to communicate clearly with others. This is lacking this, and then you have AI ofc which makes it difficult regardless
On the other hand, I would fire someone instantly if they had cheated their degree like this.
Ideally, I wouldn’t hire them. But if they were already on the payroll, I’m much more interested in their work output than their transcript.
This is just the industrialization of “Fake It Until You Make It”.
I value honesty more than most people I’m realizing. If a hire is open about their credentials I would not care.
I’ve witnessed what happens when people are ok with liars. It’s gross, and no one should normalize it.
If a hire is open about their credentials I would not care.
Typically, any job that gets filled at my company has to have a competitive candidate to consider. I’ve seen them fudge this a few times (bringing in someone they know isn’t qualified just to balance against), but it’s a hiring standard that you have to consider at least two (preferably three or four) candidates for any position.
If you show up and you don’t have the credentials for the position, you’re simply not getting the job.
I’ve witnessed what happens when people are ok with liars.
Sure. The Enron offices are spitting distance from where I work.
But I also see a lot of people fudging resumes to get feet in the door. And I don’t see people who were honest, but got screened out by a filter. So I’m the victim of selection bias, in many regards.
Different life situations for everyone, I think.
I don’t mean strictly professional honesty, but my experiences leak into how I view something like this. The biggest liar I know is still in jail for raping children, so I have a skewed view of honesty.
My industry and group are weird when it comes to credentials. We don’t have a strict, you need this degree situation.
On the other hand, I would fire someone instantly if they had cheated their degree like this.
But all you’re doing in that case is making them attend a community college with a bunch of wacky misfits for a few years.
I’ve seen some of the videos online. Some degree mills will let you CLEP (and adjacent services) your way to a degree in General Studies (or Liberal Studies, or Multidisciplinary Studies, or whatever). A lot of the time, it’s a degree in nothing in particular from a school nobody’s heard of. It’s not particularly useful, but better than nothing.
You get what you pay for. I’m not sure who is cheating who: the students, who think they’ve found a way to beat the system, or the schools, who make a quick buck in exchange for a degree of dubious value.
