In Indiana, A Higher Education Bill To Keep Your Eye On

The Indiana General Assembly is considering an innovative bill that would introduce new degree completion options for college students. It’s Senate Bill 8, entitled “Higher Education Matters,” and it contains several provisions that would upend the traditional distinctions in mission associated with two-year and four-year schools.

Authored by a group of Republican Senators led by Sen. Jean Leising (R-Oldenburg), the bill includes, among other provisions, the following four requirements:

1. It establishes a statewide reverse transfer policy for Ivy Tech Community College and Vincennes University to award associate degrees to eligible current and former students;
2. It requires the state’s public four-year institutions to prepare and submit a report to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education assessing the feasibility and advisability of establishing and conferring associate degrees.
3. It mandates public institutions offering baccalaureate degrees to establish a policy to review each of its four-year baccalaureate degree programs to determine the feasibility of structuring each in a manner that allows a full-time student to complete the baccalaureate degree within three years.
4. It requires, no later than July 1, 2025, that each four-year institution offer at least one baccalaureate degree program specifically structured to allow a full-time student to complete it within three years.

Reverse transfer is a relatively recent, but increasingly popular, policy that gives students a second chance to earn their first college degree. Consequently, it increases the total number of young Americans with a quality credential.

The process involves awarding an associate of arts degree to students who transfer from a two-year to a four-year institution prior to completing their AA degree requirements at the two-year institution. It allows students to combine the credits they earn at their four-year school with those they’d previously earned at community college or through dual credit and retroactively be awarded an associate’s degree by the two-year college.

Each year thousands of community college students transfer to four-year colleges before finishing their AA. However, many of these students ultimately drop out of college, exiting after years of study and a mountain of debt without any higher education credential to their credit.

Reverse transfer changes that equation. Instead of going 0 for 2 in the degree column, students can “reach back” and earn an associate of arts degree, and those who persist can add a B.A. to the final ledger. Some Indiana institutions have been offering reverse transfer for several years, but Senate bill 8 would establish a statewide policy for the practice

Senate Bill 8 goes a significant step further than mandating reverse transfer. It also requires the four-year universities to explore the feasibility of offering associate degrees to students who have not transferred from a two-year college. Under this provision, a student working toward a BA at a four-year school could earn an associate’s degree along the way. That option would be of particular benefit to students who drop out of college even after making significant progress toward, but coming up just short of finishing, a bachelor’s degree.

A parallel to the growing list of community colleges offering four-year degrees, this idea is not as extreme as it might appear. A substantial number of four-year universities already offer AA degrees – typically in specific occupation-oriented areas like health care, hospitality, technology, or manufacturing where an AA degree is the entry-level credential.

Embedded degrees are common in other contexts. For example, master’s degrees are often granted in Ph.D. programs either as a planned milestone or a consolation prize for students unable to complete their doctoral degrees.

Why not allow students to routinely earn an AA after they complete specified credits on their way to their bachelor’s degree? If students have completed the coursework required for an associate degree, they should not be precluded from receiving that degree just because they did all the work at a four-year college.

Finally, the bill proposes a cautious, but significant, step toward implementing three-year baccalaureate degrees. It requires institutions to study the feasibility of reshaping their BA programs into three-year curricula, and it mandates that they offer at least one such program starting in the 2006-2006 academic year.

Three-year BA degrees have been around for many years, but their popularity has been limited by several factors, including resistance by faculty and hesitancy by students.

However, newer versions of the idea are being introduced like Robert Zemsky’s and Lori Carrell’s “College in 3 Exchange,” which unlike traditional three-year programs, aims not simply to cram 120 credit hours into three years but instead, encourages colleges to rethink the undergraduate curriculum so the total number of required courses is substantially reduced, sometimes to as low as 90 credit hours, for specific programs.

Momentum for three-year degrees is building. Several institutions are in the process of introducing BA programs that might require as few as 90 credit hours, a handful of new three-year BA programs have recently been accredited, and the idea is being discussed at the federal level.

Senate Bill 8, which is aligned with Indiana Governor Eric Holcombs’s 2024 Next Level Agenda, offers a measured approach to improving degree completion and student outcomes. It’s likely to be viewed with caution, if not skepticism, in certain higher education quarters and appropriately so. But it’s also the kind of positive disruption that could benefit higher education and the students it’s meant to serve.