[eligottlieb]

Frankly, if you can stretch your degree into an additional year or take summer classes, do it. My primary regret from university (May 2011) is that I graduated in 3.5 years.

On the one hand, I had no debt. On the other hand, crunching my requirements down that way meant that I often had scheduling conflicts with interesting but non-mandatory courses like Cryptography, Networking, Computer Graphics, Robotics, Philosophy, and Sci-Fi Films.

[vermasque]

I did my BS academic time in 3 years and partly agree with this statement here. On one hand, doing the absolute minimum delivers minimal or no debt; saves time; and gets you into the full-time, non-intern/co-op workplace faster (a larger paycheck and potentially more interesting stuff) and out of the classroom. I optimized for time, cost, and good grades. As I never liked lectures as an education medium (mostly boring) and hated the BS of American college curriculum requirements (even after shaving a year off with course credit from high school, there were still unnecessary requirements), I was satisfied with the result from the view of time spent.

On the other hand, doing a minimal degree delivers minimal results. I didn't develop a focus for what I wanted to do professionally with my degree because I only took minimum requirements. The degree program just seemed like a to-do list, and all I wanted to do was check off boxes. I didn't have time to go deeper into something; this may have affected job prospects. I got a degree to do software engineering but didn't establish what I should do with software engineering beyond getting a job as a software engineer. I got a good job out of college but probably missed out on other opportunities.

Regardless, the choice of whether to compress the schedule or extend should be relative to an individual's needs. For example, if you can't afford large college debt, compress the schedule to what is affordable. Work out the trade-offs.