photo by: Shawn Valverde/Special to the Journal-World

The University of Kansas campus is pictured in this September 2023 aerial photo.

You don’t need to be a math major to understand the appealing arithmetic of a new type of degree approved by the Kansas Board of Regents this week.

You soon may be able to get a bachelor’s degree by taking 90 credit hours of classes instead of the standard 120 hours that is now required at the University of Kansas and the state’s other public universities.

With tuition and required fees set to cost more than $6,600 per semester at KU next school year, it is easy to see how the new degree option could knock $20,000 off the cost of a KU undergraduate education, once you factor in tuition and room and board savings created by being at the university for one fewer year than normal.

What is harder to calculate is whether your future employer will place much value on this new type of degree.

“I’m anxious to see what employers say and how in demand this is,” Blake Flanders, president and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents told board members on Wednesday as they unanimously agreed to start a pilot program for the new degree type.

The new degree type is being called a “Reduced Credit Bachelor’s Degree,” although it is far from certain whether that is what the degree will be called on diplomas and transcripts that are awarded to students.

Over the past several months, as Regents have investigated the concept, the issue of what to call the degree on such official documents has been a vexing one. There have been arguments that it should just be called a bachelor’s degree, while others have expressed concern that it wouldn’t be fair to call a degree that requires 25% fewer classes than a typical bachelor’s degree by the same name.

Ultimately, Regents pushed that issue down the road. The Regents agreed to start the pilot program and leave the naming issue to a later date, although the policy does state that it will be the Board of Regents — not individual universities — that will decide what the name should be.

But you may have an even more basic question: What degrees are being offered? That’s also a question that will be answered later, but expect some details to start emerging soon.

The Regents’ action on Wednesday officially gives KU and other universities the authority to start proposing specific reduced credit bachelor degrees. Those proposals will be brought forward to the full Kansas Board of Regents for approval. Once approved, universities can start enrolling students in those degree programs.

Several times during the past several months, it was said at Regents meetings that it is not likely than an engineering degree is going to be offered as reduced credit degree, for example. But examples of what type of degrees might be offered with a reduced credit requirement were harder to hear. Technically, the approved policy puts no limit on what type of undergraduate degree can be offered. The policy simply says that the Board of Regents must approve of it.

Some universities actually wanted the policy to have more guardrails. Wichita State President Rick Muma asked the Regents to consider a last-minute change to the policy that would limit such reduced-credit offering to degrees where there is an “obvious or emerging need to build a workforce.”

“I think that would help potentially clarify for these institutions who are wanting to develop a degree in this manner, and not just any degree,” Muma said. “That’s a concern that I think some of the other CEOs have as well.”

Regents, though, rejected the requested change, and if the leaders of the other state universities had such a concern, they decided not to voice it during Wednesday’s meeting. Regents said they wanted to move forward with the policy as written.

“This has been something that has been brought to us and strongly lobbied to have this,” Regent Pamela Ammar said during Wednesday’s meeting. “We’re just going to try it out with this pilot program and see how it goes.”

The approved policy does have some basic language requiring that any reduced credit degree “demonstrate sufficient market demand” before it can be approved and offered to students. Several Regents said that would mean hearing from the business community that they are interested in hiring students with this degree.

The Regents are commissioning a scientific survey of about 3,000 businesses across the state to gauge their interest in reduced-credit degrees. The survey results are expected to be presented to the Regents in the fall.

Flanders said it will be important to ask the right type of questions on the survey. Almost any business will express a desire to have more candidates available for the jobs they have to offer. But, are those businesses willing to hire students who have received less educational training?

If the reduced-credit program aims to be a solution for professions where there is a shortage of workers, nurses and school teachers are among the professions in shortest supply in Kansas. While Regents on Wednesday did not specifically discuss whether those professions would be appropriate for a reduced credit degree offering, Flanders said the board will need to listen carefully to what employers are saying.

“Are (employers) calling for more baccalaureate talent, or are they actually calling for the reduced-credit hour baccalaureate degree?” Flanders asked. “Those are, I think, two separate things, and that is what needs to be teased out here.”

Figuring out whether an employer, likely driven by shortages in the workforce, is willing to take on employees with less training, may not be an easy question to answer for every profession that exists. Flanders, though, said getting such insights will be important because the stakes are high for both employers and students.

“This isn’t going to be an easy process to validate the need for these, but it is, I think, necessary because there is a significant amount of risk if we just kind of develop this willy-nilly,” Flanders said.

For students, the consideration of whether to pursue such a degree likely goes beyond what future employers may think. At previous meetings, Regents were told that earning a reduced-credit baccalaureate degree likely would not be sufficient for students to gain admittance into a graduate program to receive a masters degree, for instance. Students who decided to later go back and get a traditional bachelor’s degree also may face some difficulties in getting a federal student loan for that degree, given that they already have an undergraduate degree in that field.

Issues like those are why the Regents said they are using a pilot program approach with reduced-credit degrees. The pilot program will last only for three years. After the three-year period, the Regents will have to vote on the matter again to determine if the reduced-credit degrees should continue to be offered, should be modified, or should be discontinued.

“Whether it will be valuable to our industries, whether it will be valuable to our students, those are the things that we need to determine with the pilot program,” Regent Alysia Johnston said. “And I think those are the things we will be able to determine.”