UMaine Presque Isle loses blanket approval for new YourPace programs after reports of ‘speed runners’
A student walks across campus at the University of Maine at Presque Isle in September 2026. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer)
The accreditor for the University of Maine at Presque Isle has revoked the school’s blanket approval to offer new competency-based degree programs following an investigation into concerns about the rapid speed at which students were getting degrees through its online program, YourPace.
If the University of Maine System wants to introduce new competency programs going forward, it will need to submit them directly to the accreditor for approval.
“Given its concern about the dramatic growth of the YourPace program attributed in part to the speed at which students have been able to complete the credits required to earn a degree, both undergraduate and graduate, the Commission suspends University of Maine System’s general approval to offer competency-based education programs at University of Maine at Presque Isle,” the New England Commission of Higher Education wrote.
In addition, the commission will monitor the university’s progress through reports and requests, including site visits to UMPI and the other system schools that offer the degree programs in spring of 2027.
YourPace is a fully asynchronous competency-based program designed for adults, meaning students can earn credit whenever they demonstrate that they’ve mastered the course content, without set lecture or exam times.
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The program — which has seen explosive 700% growth over the last four years and is now behind most of the enrollment growth across whole University of Maine System — came under scrutiny following reporting from The Washington Post that many YourPace students were completing bachelor’s degrees in as little as eight weeks.
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The New England Commission of Higher Education, which accredits not just UMPI but the whole University of Maine System collectively, released its decision last Wednesday.
System spokesperson Samantha Warren said forthcoming YourPace programs already approved by the board of trustees, including a Master of Healthcare Administration approved at its latest meeting in September, will not be affected.
In a press release about the decision, UMPI President Ray Rice said YourPace has worked exactly as intended, by recognizing the knowledge and experience working adults already have and “providing an affordable, flexible pathway to a degree that will improve their career opportunities and economic mobility.”
President Ray Rice talks to reporters on the University of Maine at Presque Isle’s campus in September 2026. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer) Purchase this image
System Chancellor Dannel Malloy, also quoted in the statement, said he was proud of the impact YourPace has had on thousands of adult learners who were able to get a degree while balancing work and their families.
“We welcome NECHE’s continued review and are committed to demonstrating that the innovation and accessibility that make YourPace so impactful are matched by the academic quality and rigor our students, employers and accreditor expect,” Malloy said.
The Post story profiled college “speed runners” who race to get their degrees in as little time as possible by transferring in the maximum number of non-collegiate online tutorial credits, then completing as many YourPace courses as they can in a session.
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UMPI offers a flat rate of $1,800 per undergraduate session, so students pay the same cost regardless of how many courses they complete, and students are allowed to transfer in up to two-thirds of the credits needed for a bachelor’s degree.
About 90% of YourPace students get their degree in under a year, and 48% finish in one 16-week semester, according to data from the latest school year. Students transferred in an average of 91 credits, and that number is higher for undergrads.
As is standard practice, the accreditor, known as NECHE, requested a response from the university about the concerns raised in the article. UMPI submitted that update in August, in which it said the Post’s focus on rapid completers, “describes only the end of an academic journey, not the history of that journey itself” and that they make up a minority of students.
The university reported that about a fifth of YourPace students students finished 10 or more courses, or 30 credits, in a semester, and 11% completed 12 courses or more.
About half of the average YourPace student’s credits don’t come from an accredited college source. Nearly half of those noncollege credits are from Sophia Learning, a low-cost online tutorial site.
The school acknowledged a need for more monitoring of students who accelerate through their degrees rapidly, and a hard look at its transfer credit policy. But school and system leaders said they were confident the accreditation review process would not find any issues, since NECHE has accredited the YourPace program at every step of the way.
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The University of Maine at Presque Isle is commonly referred to as UMPI. (Daryn Slover/Staff Photographer) Purchase this image
The commission discussed the university’s response at its latest regular meeting in late September.
NECHE will begin conducting visits to UMPI, the University of Maine at Farmington and University of Maine at Fort Kent — where the system has rolled out a much smaller number of YourPace programs — in order to assess the system’s “oversight and implementation” of its competency-based programs.
The system must also submit a report with detailed data, including faculty-to-student ratios, an analysis of transferred credits, the length of time it took graduates to complete degrees and details about procedures to verify that the students who register for courses are the ones actually completing the work.
System and UMPI representatives must appear before the commission in April 2027 for a review of the evaluation’s results.
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Tagged: higher education, University of Maine at Presque Isle, University of Maine System
Riley covers education for the Press Herald. Before moving to Portland, she spent two years in Kenai, Alaska, reporting on local government, schools and natural resources for the public radio station KDLL. More by Riley Board
