By Dr. Joel Ademisoye, United States
Having read this article by Todd Wallace, “Educators alarmed by students ‘speed running’ online degrees,” The Washington Post, April 20, 2026, PA1 and PA6.), with an intensive coverage on how some universities like the University of Maine at Presque Isle, Western Governors, WGU, etc., are offering an unorthodox, parallel degree programs for some students in the bachelor’s degree in 8 weeks and earning a master’s degree in just five weeks or fast paced via online web based tutorial courses. This non traditional university education study isn’t for everyone, but it is restricted from the age of 20 years and above including the Elderly. The bottom line is, that the students in this non traditional university program are learning and studying at their own pace.
Imagine if these courses were measured against the traditional university education or college bachelor’s degree of 4 years and a master’s degree of 2 years or 18 months depending on the type of graduate program. To this writer, in contrast to the traditional university, many of these online universities are offering degrees to their students at ‘the speed of a light’, but at low cost of bachelor’s and master’s degrees at just over $4,000. No where in the traditional university educational systems that a student can get this cheap university degree. It is my opinion that you get what you pay for. I found the low cost for two university degrees to be a bargain in comparison to the cost of the two degrees at a traditional university,
In view of these web based courses.
However, as an educator, I asked the penitent question, what are the students learning in terms of the courseload, scope of the curriculum in-depth coverage of the courses and the integrity of their education and their competency following their graduation.
Nonetheless, some of the leaders of the alternative online universities offered as part of their aims, is to address the affordability issue in the higher education sector in the United States. How many educators have raised the alarm about the online universities and their speed of offering the degrees to the students. I have an issue with the academic integrity of the online university education degree that is offered at a fast pace.
My university education experiences in a traditional university setting, for a bachelor’s degree, I spent about 3 years, because of my summer school programs and carried a full load of 15 credit hours per semester. For my master’s degree in the city and regional planning studies, which was a structured professional program, that was required for two years and a total of 60 credit hours to meet and fulfill the graduation requirements. I can’t just imagine that 60 credit hours could be streamlined, fused and shortened into a 3 or 4-month master’s degree program.
But, this online universities are radically altering and changing the U. S. Higher Education in the names of reducing the students time spent in the classrooms and saving them from the heavy burden of the student loans. But, this writer is concerned about an opportunity costs for trading off the traditional university education system for the breath taking online university education in the United States, which is eroding the student’s knowledge, academic integrity and competency of the graduate and their performance in the workplace. As the article rightly revealed that the certificates awarded by the online universities are for the purposes of promotion, getting a raise and helping the students to secure jobs faster. Also, it appears the online universities which are delivering bachelor’s and master’s degrees in a few weeks and months, unequivocally are undermining and reducing the quality of the Higher Education in the United States.
Dr. Ademisoye, your reflection raises important concerns about academic integrity, competency, and the long-term implications of accelerated online degree programs. I appreciate the caution embedded in your analysis, particularly your insistence that education should not become merely transactional or reduced to credential acquisition for promotions and salary increases.
However, I find myself asking a more uncomfortable question through a Foucauldian lens:
Who decided that four years is the “correct” amount of time required to produce an educated person?
This question is important because many of us, particularly those educated within traditional systems, have internalized the assumption that length of time is naturally connected to mastery, intellectual depth, and competence. But is that necessarily true? Or have we normalized the architecture of higher education so thoroughly that we no longer interrogate its origins, purposes, and beneficiaries?
Michel Foucault (1977) argues that modern institutions such as schools, prisons, hospitals, and military barracks function as disciplinary systems that organize bodies in time and space through surveillance, examination, normalization, and regulation. In Discipline and Punish (1977), he examines how institutions produce ‘docile bodies’ through structures of observation, control, and training rather than through overt force alone. From this perspective, educational structures, including the traditional four-year degree model, can be understood not as naturally fixed truths, but as historically constructed systems shaped by broader social, economic, political, and institutional forces.
So while I share your concerns about overly compressed degrees that may sacrifice rigor, I am equally cautious about romanticizing the traditional model without critically examining it.
We must ask:
Does spending four years in a classroom automatically produce competence?
Does seat time equal mastery?
Does prolonged exposure to institutional systems necessarily translate into intellectual depth, innovation, or workplace readiness?
The evidence is far more complicated than we often admit.
Across many sectors, we already see graduates from traditional institutions who struggle with critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, adaptability, and application of knowledge in real-world environments. We also see highly competent professionals who learned through nontraditional pathways, experiential learning, apprenticeships, certifications, self-directed learning, or accelerated models.
This does not mean all accelerated programs are academically sound. Some certainly deserve scrutiny. But scrutiny should be applied equally across all models of higher education, including traditional universities that sometimes hide weak learning outcomes behind prestige, lengthy degree structures, and institutional reputation.
What concerns me most is not necessarily how quickly a degree is earned, but whether meaningful learning outcomes are being achieved.
Can the graduate think critically?
Can they synthesize knowledge?
Can they solve problems?
Can they adapt knowledge across contexts?
Can they perform effectively in the workplace?
Can they contribute ethically and intellectually to society?
Those questions matter more to me than whether learning occurred over eight weeks, two years, or four years.
I also think we must confront the economic dimensions honestly. Traditional higher education systems benefit financially from prolonged enrollment structures. Universities depend on tuition, housing, fees, meal plans, auxiliary services, and extended student participation to sustain institutional operations. Through a Foucauldian lens, we must examine how power and economics intersect within higher education systems while presenting themselves as guardians of academic purity.
To be clear, this is not an argument against traditional universities. I remain deeply committed to higher education and believe there is immense value in intellectual community, mentorship, dialogue, research engagement, and the developmental experiences that many traditional campuses provide. But we must be careful not to confuse institutional duration with educational quality automatically.
Perhaps the deeper issue is that higher education is undergoing an identity crisis.
Are degrees primarily about intellectual formation?
Workforce preparation?
Social mobility?
Credentialing?
Economic signaling?
Personal growth?
Professional competence?
Institutional prestige?
Different models answer these questions differently.
I believe the future of education may require us to move beyond simplistic binaries of “traditional equals quality” and “accelerated equals inferior.” Instead, we may need more sophisticated conversations about competency-based education, assessment integrity, experiential learning, measurable outcomes, equity, access, and the changing nature of work itself.
Most importantly, we must resist the temptation to assume that time alone guarantees transformation.
Sometimes students spend four years memorizing.
Sometimes students spend one year deeply engaging.
Sometimes institutions mistake endurance for learning.
The real question is not simply how long students stay in school.