ASU is now offering 3-year bachelor’s degrees for education students

Arizona State University is making education careers more accessible with a new three-year bachelor’s degree program.

The program requires 90 credits to graduate instead of the typical 120 and costs less than a traditional four-year program.

ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation still offers four-year degrees with more electives and a wider range of options and specializations than the three-year option.

Carole Basile, dean of ASU’s teacher college, said she hopes this opens the education field to more people who are interested in teaching but may not have been able to commit to a four-year program.

“Most teacher education programs are built for average [students]. They’re built for somebody to walk in, take all their courses, do their student teaching, walk out and teach. And that model doesn’t work for everybody,” she said.

Dean of ASU teacher college hopes shorter degree will open pathways

Basile added that the college has been looking for pathways for nontraditional students to pursue an education degree and believes this may be a solution.

“We hope that this will drive enrollment. We hope we can move more people into teaching, that we’re giving them a path that may be more accessible to them to get more people into teaching,” she said.

Basile said a streamlined program, which is available online and in-person, could also provide Arizona with a faster way to get new teachers into K-12 classrooms around the state amid an ongoing teacher shortage.

Graduates of the three-year program will receive an Arizona teaching certificate in elementary education or special education.

The college also partners with local schools to get education students real-life experience in classrooms before graduation.

Funding for this journalism is made possible by the Arizona Local News Foundation.

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