Students may soon be able to earn bachelor's degrees in as little as three years at California State University campuses.

The system's trustees recently voted to allow campuses to create three new types of shortened bachelor's degrees.

They include a Bachelor of Education degree for aspiring teachers who want a bachelor's focusing on teaching, specifically.

A Bachelor of Professional Studies degree, which targets employees pursuing managerial positions that will give them course credit for skills learned at past jobs.

And a Bachelor of Applied Studies degree that's geared toward students with vocational or technical training, such as in car maintenance or home heating repair.

The new degree types don't replace the existing four year bachelor's in the arts and sciences, but will instead widen the offerings campuses can provide if they want to.

There's no mandate for the campuses to create any, nor do the new degrees have to be as short as three years.

They may require any number of units that take between 3 and 4 years to finish.

The policy sets the minimum units for these degree types at 90 units, which typically take three years for students to complete.

A four year degree generally requires 120 units.

Nathan Evans, Cal State's Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, helped to write the policy.

These proposed amendments recognize the importance of creating opportunities for additional undergraduate degree frameworks that can better align to particular career goals, reduce the time required for students to earn a degree, or to offer more immediate access to economic and social mobility.

The new offerings are also designed to compete with for profit and online colleges that offer quicker degree programs, but are generally far pricier than what Cal State charges.

Fall is the earliest that faculty at Cal State's 22 campuses will begin working on developing these new degrees.

The first to debut may come as soon as fall 2027, but more likely in 2028.

For Cal Matters.

I'm Robert Meeks, with reporting by Mikhail Zinshteyn.