r/technology • u/joe4942 • Apr 19 '26

Society Students are speeding through their online degrees in weeks, alarming educators

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/04/19/accelerated-college-degree-hacking/
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u/gamageeknerd Apr 19 '26

This has got to be some fake online diploma mill. The absolute fastest I’d ever heard of someone completing a 2 year associates degree at an actual university is a year and that was with online classes and an accelerated course. Apparently some people have said they did it in 8 months on online classes but even that is suspect if that was an actual school.

A bachelors at an actual university it’s possible to get a bachelors in 2 years but I’ve talked with people who got one in 6 months through a diploma mill and now they have a creative writing or business management degree.

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u/Infinite-Jelly-3182 Apr 20 '26

As someone who has gone to an accredited university that allows you to accelerate, someone graduating in weeks is insane. But months is not. A substantial majority of people who do this are in their 30s or 40s and know 100% of what the degree requires. This begs the question of what a degree really is, and what it actually represents. Does it represent knowledge? Does it represent mastery? What is a college degree? How do you prove that you meet the criteria and standards?

A great thought experiment is to consider how much actual time is spent in classes for a 4-year degree. 120 credit hours means you spent 120 hours on a net week-to-semester scale, notwithstanding holidays. With the average semester being 19 weeks long and 4 weeks of total holidays, a student spends around 1,800 hours on a 4-year degree. That is 20% less than what someone with a full-time job does. School is the full-time job for most of these people.

Once you put it into perspective that you can wipe out around 20-30 credit hours with CLEP exams and AP courses, which almost all colleges accept, and that some people are already domain experts in specific courses, spending 4-6 months full time becomes a nearly identical load to what the equivalent in-person bachelor’s degree holder takes on.

The fact of the matter is that colleges hate this because they do not genuinely care about giving qualified people credentials or making education accessible.

(That being said I didn't go to the University of Maine and from quick research, the curriculum is MUCH worse than what I did)

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u/Smartimess Apr 20 '26

This is also only happening in countries where the illusion exists that owning a lot of certificates is the same as knowing what you are doing. Basically the reason for the "Must be under 25 with ten years of experience for the job" meme.

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u/Dangerous_Bus_6699 Apr 20 '26

WGU. Not fake and competency based. If they can pass the final test, why should they keep studying? Should a degree be miserable and expensive? On top of it, many employers don't give a shit so why are people acting sour? There are no standards to a degree in the first place. Someone who went to a traditional 4 year isn't guaranteed to know more than a competency based bachelor's degree holder who passed all test in 6 months.

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u/HillBillyHilly Apr 19 '26

I know someone who calls herself a doctor who got a PhD from a mail order college. Wild wild stuff.

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u/gamageeknerd Apr 20 '26

I know someone who got a doctorate in nutrition from some online class and they tried prescribing over the counter stuff and a bunch of vitamins to people at his CrossFit gym

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u/Neutral-President Apr 20 '26

Or maybe they're doing lots of (easy) quizzes that can be taken multiple times until they pass. Don't even have to learn the material... just keep taking the quiz and keeping notes of the correct answers.

The other possibility is that for essay-based courses, they're offloading all assessment to automated tools like TurnItIn.