Our Girl of the Lake College (OLLU) has change into the primary Texas higher-ed establishment to supply a reduced-hour, three-year bachelor’s diploma program, the San Antonio college introduced Monday.
With a decrease total price of attendance and a six-semester construction, the brand new program affords college students a quick observe to the job market or graduate college, officers on the personal Catholic establishment mentioned. Whereas sustaining the identical normal schooling, main and minor necessities as conventional four-year applications, Lake Specific cuts pointless elective programs to streamline the method, OLLU president Abel Chávez mentioned.
“By providing a three-year bachelor’s diploma possibility, we’re empowering college students to realize their tutorial targets extra effectively whereas decreasing monetary burdens and opening doorways to profession alternatives sooner,” Chávez mentioned in an emailed assertion.
Majors obtainable underneath this system embody psychology, criminology and felony justice, social work and childhood research. College students additionally will have the ability to couple with a minor.
The revealing of Lake Specific comes roughly a month after a analysis examine categorized OLLU as a “excessive stress” establishment, or one which’s much less adaptable to altering financial tides. The examine’s creator, Colorado State College political scientist Kyle L. Saunders, evaluated U.S. universities based mostly on their potential to climate the rise of AI, falling enrollment and different destabilizing market elements.
OLLU Provost Alan J. Silva disputed the examine’s findings on the time, noting that it was based mostly on 2024 knowledge. He mentioned the college has since made vital adjustments that weren’t mirrored in Saunders’ conclusions.
Past the launch of Lake Specific, the college discontinued 19 low-enrollment applications final yr. This Could, it launched a “no-cost” five-year grasp’s program for eligible college students.
The Southern Affiliation of Schools and Faculties has already authorized OLLU’s Lake Specific program. Which means the campus will welcome its first cohort of scholars into three-year program in fall 2026.
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Musician, educator and historian Robert Ojeda will train the course, which runs by June and is to non-OLLU college students.
