First three-year graduates finish up at Hartwick

ONEONTA — Hartwick College has graduated the first class in its three-year bachelor’s degree program.

The program began in 2009 with 18 students. Twelve from that group graduated in May, says David Conway, the school’s vice president of enrollment management and marketing.

The others from that initial group either left the school or will finish in four years, he adds. The program has since grown to include about 10 percent of each year’s incoming freshman class.

Of this year’s 446 freshmen, 44 are enrolled in the three-year program, Conway says. The 10 percent mark was the school’s initial goal for the initiative.

“It wasn’t my sense that we would get to this point so quickly,” Conway says.

He adds that the college probably needs to start discussing the program’s future and whether and how it will grow.

“We certainly don’t want to prevent anyone from being in the program,” he says.

Two groups of students have progressed through the program since it began. About three-quarters finished their degrees in three years. Often, students who took four years switched majors, Conway says.

The three-year program began after Hartwick’s current president, Margaret Drugovich, took office in 2008. Conway says she broached the subject of a three-year program in the fall of 2008 and the college began exploring its feasibility.

Of the private college’s 31 majors, 24 participate in the three-year program, Conway says. That includes some of the college’s most-enrolled majors like nursing and biology.

The move to launch the program was aimed squarely at affordability, Conway says. College costs have been rising, he notes, and federal aid hasn’t been helping middle-income students as much as they need.

So, student-loan debt has been rising.

Finishing a degree in three years instead of four will save students more than 25 percent, Conway adds, since it eliminates the fourth year of tuition — the most expensive year because of rising annual costs.

“We want people at the low end and in the middle of the spectrum to be able to get access to a good education,” Conway says.

And that access, he adds, shouldn’t come with large debt loads that will cripple students as they’re just starting out.

In New York, 61 percent of graduating seniors leave college with debt, according to the Project on Student Debt, an initiative of the Institute for College Access & Success. The institute is a nonprofit independent research and policy organization.

The average debt load totals more than $26,000. At private four-year schools, that total can increase to more than $30,000 or even $40,000 in some cases, according to the project.

Students in the three-year program don’t take online or summer courses, with the exception of nursing students, who take two summer classes. They simply complete their required coursework in a compressed period. 

Since that makes for an intense experience, the program is restricted to students with a high-school grade point average of 85 and up, Conway says. The program tends to attract high-achieving students in intensive programs in areas like the sciences, he adds.

Many of those students also bring Advanced Placement coursework from high school that can earn them college credits, Conway notes. That helps them reduce their course load somewhat. 

The students get priority access to registration and also are assigned an adviser specific to the three-year program, whose job it is to keep the students on track.

Hartwick’s tuition, room, board, and fees total more than $47,000 for the 2012-2013 school year for a full-time student, according to the college.       

Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com