GSE prof Robert Zemsky urges 3-year college programs

At most European universities, students receive their undergraduate degrees in three years — and Graduate School of Education professor Robert Zemsky thinks American should do the same.

In his book, Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education, which was released earlier this month, Zemsky argues that the undergraduate experience should be shortened to three years at colleges and universities across the country.

Zemsky makes his case on the basis of two elements of education, which he sees as evidence of a more efficient educational alternative.

First, he argues that because the majority of students now pursue advanced degrees, it is logical to find ways to shorten the time they spend in college in order to get a jump-start on professional and graduate degrees.

Second, Zemsky says in order to help American students transition to a three-year undergraduate system, their senior year of high school could be focused on developing the skills students will need to keep up with the accelerated pace.

Besides his arguments for shortening the undergraduate time frame from four to three years, Zemsky acknowledges that such reforms will have gigantic ramifications for education and predicts that technology will be integral to facilitating such reforms.

The end result, according to Zemsky, would be a three-year baccalaureate similar to the system of undergraduate education in Europe.

James Wells, a British exchange student, said that upon arriving in America for 11th grade, the first thing that struck him was the increased number of subjects he was required to take.

In contrast, the 11th and 12th grade equivalent in Britain — 6th form — requires students to take only “a condensed subject range of 3 subjects on average,” said Wells.

He found the seven-subject requirement in America to be “distracting,” allowing him no time to focus on the subjects he cared about most in order to best prepare for the compressed college curriculum of British universities.

Wells echoed the sentiments Zemsky expresses, saying he is “not convinced Europeans enter university at a higher level than Americans, but they are better prepared for the pace and condensed subject matter of a three-year course.”

On the other hand, students argue that compressing the college curriculum will preclude students from discovering and developing interests that may have otherwise gone undiscovered.

For example, Paul Fleming, a College junior who is originally from the United Kingdom, said he declared a major in sociology here at Penn that caters to interests he had not known about in high school.

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