Higher education has taken quite a beating lately.

Lawmakers have been going after administrators and faculty at high-profile institutions over Gaza protests and diversity initiatives. Students and parents are getting increasingly impatient with rising costs. Faculty are disgruntled in many places over tight budgets and a lack of job and tenure opportunities. Administrators fret about demographics that could lead to fewer and fewer students being in the shiny, state-of-the-art student centers and dormitories that have been built in recent years.

Is there anybody out there happy with the state of higher education? Anybody?

Clearly, it’s time for some innovation.

And at least one innovative idea is floating around in academic circles – a three-year bachelor’s degree.

Leaders at some colleges and universities in the United States are toying with reducing the number of credit hours required for some programs from the typical 120 hours of credit to 90 hours so students can complete a bachelor’s degree in three years and still be able to participate in extracurricular activities and enjoy other aspects of college life. Its supporters say it would save students money and get them into the “real world” of the job market more quickly.

It also would increase completion rates, because fewer than half of those seeking a bachelor’s degree complete it within four years.

On the other hand, opponents argue that slimming down a four-year degree to three would short-change students, create a two-tier system, with wealthier students able to get the higher-grade credential of a four-year degree, and it would rob students of the opportunity to broaden their horizons by taking courses outside their major and their interests.

There are some merits to those arguments. Perhaps the best way to approach it would be to slim down degrees in specific areas, such as nursing or law enforcement, and keep the four-year requirement in other fields. There is also a counterargument to be had about whether the required courses students must tackle at some schools are really necessary – does an English major really need to slog through an advanced math course, for instance?

Administrators and lawmakers should be keeping a close watch on how three-year bachelor’s degree programs do in other places and if they succeed there, bring them to Pennsylvania. England and France are among the European nations that only require three years for a bachelor’s degree, and there’s no reason for us to stick with it just because that’s the way it’s always been done.

“The 120-hour degree is codified by tradition,” Chris Hopey, the president of Merrimack College in Massachusetts, told Inside Higher Ed. “That’s all it is.”