College In 3 In a Nutshell
“Empowering students to finish their bachelor’s degree in three years will cut costs, encourage more students to pursue higher education, and give graduates a head start.” – Senator Amy Klobachar
2025 Edition
What Is College-in-3
The College-in-3 Exchange (Cin3) is a collective of campuses engaged in conversations to design undergraduate degree options that increase student success while decreasing student costs. This idea has moved from an experiment with a few campuses to an organized movement, serving as a catalyst for reimagining undergraduate education using evidence-based practice to yield curricular options that are shorter and less expensive.
What Is The Vision for College-in-3?
Our vision is to have 3-year pathways to college degrees as a widely accepted option in US higher education.
Why College-in-3?
Three-year degrees can provide a high-quality education at a lower cost to students, and reflect the willingness and ability of colleges and universities to innovate and respond to societal needs.
The stark realities facing American higher education today are on full display. In increasing numbers, we are being asked about higher education’s value. The most critical questions about the state of higher education come from within the enterprise itself. Why do so many U.S. students start college and never finish, especially first generation, low income, and students of color? Why have 120 credits come to define a college degree? What should a college graduate know and be able to do in the 21st-century?
What is educational research revealing about how students learn and develop, and how can we implement those results at scale? And importantly, how can we work together across roles and disciplines to create new options? Those who serve students pursuing higher education are ideally positioned to design and implement reforms, in partnership with accreditors, policy makers, and employers. Higher education needs not just new, but dramatically different designs to achieve dramatically different results.
What Are The Goals of College-in-3?
- Serve as an active incubator for colleges and universities to facilitate engagement in innovation around the cost and quality of 3-year bachelor’s degrees.
- Create a learning community of institutions that will support and enhance individual redesign efforts of 3-year degrees.
- Take this initiative to scale from an experiment of a few campuses to a nationally organized higher education movement.
How Did It Get Started?
College-in-3 got its start in 2021, emerging from conversations and co-authored publications of Bob Zemsky, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and Lori Carrell, Chancellor of the University of Minnesota Rochester. They shared a belief that higher education reform has to start from the inside out, with courageous conversations that institutions often avoid, such as poor student outcomes and high costs. This thinking led them to revisit Bob’s long-held conviction that a three-year degree could make a real contribution to higher education reform. Some ten institutions volunteered to serve as pilots, and College-in-3 was born.
Catching On
The success of the first colleges and universities taking up this challenge demonstrated that it was possible to engage some faculty in the experiment—and for whom the effort was, to quote Chris Hopey, president of Merrimack College, “truly liberating.” What emerged from those initial campus-wide conversations was a process for redesign tailored to the local campus context. In April 2023, a newly launched College-in-3 project tested this insight at a general Convening of the lead faculty from the project’s first pilots. The convening demonstrated that there was a real spark among the pilot institutions.
Funding from the Strada Education Foundation supported the growth of Cin3 in 2024, an annual Convening of some 40 participants hosted by Merrimack College, and its transition to an independent non-profit membership organization. Support from Arnold Ventures in 2025 enabled Cin3 to grow to more than 70 members as of December 2025 and to build a foundation for future growth. The Strada Education Foundation provided additional support for the 2025 Annual Convening. That meeting, hosted by the University of Minnesota Rochester, facilitated a dialogue among the 50 participants and provided rich learning resulting from conversations with colleagues. As of summer 2025, all seven institutional accreditors have opened the way for institutions to submit for review their programs of less than 120 credits. The College-in-3 Exchange has received considerable media attention, with far-ranging coverage from Forbes, University Business, the Boston Globe, the Hechinger Report, Inside Higher Ed, and many others.
What Are The Benefits Of Joining The College-in-3 Exchange?
All members have free support to build and launch their 3-year degrees, including:
- Individualized consultations to support their 3-year degree
- Access to the thought partnership coordinated by Cin3 to engage with higher education experts, including the executive director, CIn3 research and assessment experts, and other members of the
- Institutional members are promoted and featured on the College-in-3
- Opportunities to attend in-person Convenings, and to participate in monthly virtual information sharing discussions with fellow members and key guest speakers on all topics related to 3-year degrees.
What Do Institutions Do As Members of the College-in-3 Exchange?
All Exchange members are committed to the vision of establishing 3-year pathways to college degrees as a widely accepted option in US higher education. In practice, this means:
- A commitment to design and implement one or more 3-year degree programs of either less than 120 credits or at least 120 credits but requiring no more than 3 years of continuous enrollment.
- Collect data on student learning and other outcomes of 3-year degrees as well as IPEDS- equivalent data on selected data points
- Develop and implement three-year assessment
- Work with state regulatory bodies and accreditors to contribute research and evidence that support goals of establishing 3-year pathways to college degrees.
- Participate in shared learning opportunities with other members of the College-in-3
- Provide updates on progress at least twice a
- Contribute feedback and insights to strengthen the
- Respect the privacy and contributions of fellow members.