The University of Lynchburg will soon offer two bachelor’s degree programs designed to be completed in three years instead of the traditional four.
The private university’s new degree options in applied public health and applied educational studies will allow students to graduate with 96 credit hours. The university already offers 120-credit-hour programs for public health and educational studies and will continue to offer the standard four-year option.
The University of Lynchburg will be the first school accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to offer three-year bachelor’s degrees, according to a statement from the university. SACSCOC approved the two programs for a five-year pilot at its December meeting last week.
SACSCOC is the regional accreditor for colleges and universities in 11 Southern states and periodically reviews 70 member schools in Virginia to ensure they’re meeting higher education standards. Accreditation is required in order for a college or university to participate in federal and state student financial aid programs.
The high cost of attending college was a key motivator for offering shorter degrees, said Stephen Smith, interim associate vice president of academic and strategic operations at the university. “This might attract a different type of student that might not otherwise be able to afford” a traditional four-year program, he said.
The university estimates students may save about $40,000 on their overall college costs by choosing the three-year option.
Lynchburg estimates the total cost of attendance to be about $50,000 for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Shorter programs part of university restructuring plan
The two new degree programs will begin in fall 2026. Each will initially take on up to 15 new full-time freshmen.
University spokesperson Heather Bradley said by email that the university conducted focus groups with students to gauge interest in the new programs as they were being developed.
Smith said the abbreviated programs eliminate some elective requirements. But students still have access to work-based learning and “a higher degree of coursework” that can prepare students to transition into a master’s program, he said. “Some people really want a more focused experience, an advanced level of experience, and that can lead them into further studies down the road.”
The University of Lynchburg offers graduate degree programs in education and public health. In most cases, graduates can also attend master’s programs at other institutions with the three-year degree, Smith said.
The idea for the shorter programs came from Alison Morrison-Shetlar, who joined the university as president in 2020.
Smith said shorter bachelor’s degree programs seem to be more common in Europe. “That’s probably why the president brought it forward, with her background,” Smith said.
Morrison-Shetlar was raised in Scotland before moving to the U.S. in 1993.
Lynchburg announced a reorganization of its academic departments in 2024. The university said at that time it would eliminate several academic programs and cut more than 40 jobs in an effort to streamline operations and cut costs.
In November 2025, the university began offering buyouts to tenured and tenure-track faculty. At that time, it reported that it had reduced its deficit from about $12 million in 2022 to less than $2.7 million.
Morrison-Shetlar plans to retire at the end of this academic year.
“One of the things that we looked at with this degree [pathway] … is why is it 120 hours?” Smith said. “Why is 120 hours the benchmark of a college degree? And there was no answer to that question. It just felt like it was an arbitrary number.”
Bradley said that the new degree programs contribute to the university’s strategy “in that they empower students to navigate their own path and tailor their educational journey for success in their chosen career.” She said a student could potentially earn a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate degree from the university in five years.
Higher education beginning to explore three-year degree programs
Accreditors have only recently begun to relax the 120 credit-hour standard for bachelor’s degrees.
Since 2023, about 60 colleges nationwide have made plans to offer three-year programs, according to reporting by online publication Inside Higher Ed.
Purdue, a state university in Indiana, started offering three-year undergraduate degree programs in 2017. The average time for a Purdue student to earn their undergraduate degree reached an all-time low of 3.84 years in 2024-2025, according to data from the university.
In 2024, the Indiana state legislature passed a bill requiring public colleges and universities to add three-year degree programs, part of a widespread restructuring of the state’s higher education system.
At Virginia colleges and universities, the average time to complete a bachelor’s degree is four years at private institutions and 4.2 years at public ones, per data from the State Council on Higher Education for Virginia.
The University of Lynchburg is now a member of the College-in-3 Exchange, a nonprofit network of institutions exploring options around three-year degree programs. Its members range from Northwood University in Michigan, which has about 1,000 undergraduates, to the University of Central Florida, which enrolls about 60,000 undergraduates.
The University of Lynchburg originally submitted five bachelor’s degree programs to SACSCOC for consideration: public health and educational studies, plus exercise physiology, history and psychological sciences. SACSCOC denied all five at its meeting in June 2025.
Bradley said the university received helpful feedback on its applications from SACSCOC and chose two of the five programs to resubmit to the accreditor due to the short deadline to do so before the December meeting.
Smith, a Lynchburg alumnus, is excited about the new three-year offerings. “We’ve had a lot of headwinds, and we’ve gone through some restructuring and some different things,” he said. “But I think it highlights the fact that we’re still trying to innovate and create within the academic world.”
Accreditor provides update on University of Lynchburg warning status
SACSCOC issued a warning to the university in December 2024 for failing to comply with five requirements.
The university maintains its accreditation while it has warning status, and previously said it anticipated it would be on warning for two years while it fixed the issues cited by the accreditor.
In an email to the campus community last week, Morrison-Shetlar said that the university had “cleared” three of the five issues that had led to the accreditation warning, “including the core finance requirement, which was the primary reason for being placed on warning.”
She went on to explain that SACSCOC’s board has asked to see a balanced audit at the end of the 2026 fiscal year, “showing our ability to stick to the budget we created.” The university will remain on warning for a second year, something Morrison-Shetlar said is typical for institutions on warning.
A list of accreditation actions voted on during SACSCOC’s December meeting has not yet been posted online. The accreditor did not respond to a request for more information about its approval of the new degree programs at Lynchburg.