When I was a business executive and CEO in the transportation and technology sector, we used a concept called “lean thinking” which is a manufacturing philosophy developed by MIT Professor Jim Womack, who is called the “Godfather of Lean” stemming from his work as a consultant to the Japanese automobile industry.

He then took what he learned, and brought it back to the US, and in the process, helped transform our automotive industry into one of the best in the world. He also worked with legendary jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford.

Lean thinking means always looking for ways to reduce waste and improve quality, while continuously lowering costs. It also especially focuses on time management, and doing things faster than you thought you could. The results can be astonishing.

So why not apply lean management methods to our universities?

The U.S. is particularly burdened by academic efficiency issues compared with its counterparts in most of the world. In law, for example, Europe, Asia, and Latin America train their lawyers in an accelerated 3-year undergraduate degree format (the LL.B or bachelor of law). In the U.S. it takes twice as long. In business, France’s INSEAD offers the MBA in a 9-month track. In the U.S., it’s two years. Even medical training can be done faster: NYU has cut the medical degree down to three years, and that’s a good beginning. Then there’s the Ph.d. In the UK, it’s a 3-year degree. In the U.S., it’s twice that time, and in the humanities it is not unusual to see candidates spend up to eight years.

The entire undergraduate degree itself can also be done a lot faster if students use the summer semester, and universities concentrate and get to the point for the majority of students: learning how to read carefully; getting proficient at expository writing; understanding the basic sciences, and having good facility in appropriate math. If you’re in engineering, three years is also plenty of time if you use the summers. In the arts, two to three years allows you to achieve professional proficiency, especially in all these cases, if you use your high school time wisely (Hartt School of Music will place new students as sophomores if they qualify from high school work, which gets the B.Music degree down to three years).

The largest source of resistance is understandable the faculty, usually because no one explains to them the benefits of speeding things up. In the meantime, U.S. student debt now tops $2 trillion dollars, and more and more students are getting behind on repayment; some may never catch up.

Lean business thinking can bring enormous benefits to education because it forces us to ask basic questions about how we do things, what they cost, and how to improve “throughput.” This does not mean that education is a factory process: it means that the institutions that we call “universities” must be somewhat more like efficient manufacturing operations.

That means that you must constantly measure and control time, resources, cost and quality.

Education still continues long after one graduates; indeed, the faster you get in and out of college or graduate school, the faster you get to the real education: working, and applying and activating the knowledge you acquired in school.

“Lean Education” is a classic win-win for all parties, but in order to get it started and make the initial tough decisions, our university administration must include some more seasoned business professionals and leaders who can help bring in practical working knowledge to show everyone how to move ahead. This could also possibly include “merging” or coordinating more of our universities in order to achieve efficiencies in operations and finance: the University of Hartford and UConn could be a good fit together, and there are many more examples.

Some say that students otherwise shouldn’t be rushed; that they aren’t ready to graduate at a younger age, or worked faster, and faculty resist being pushed as well because they feel that research requires unstructured work. It does, but students are also more than ready, and yearning for new ambitious and audacious goals. Our nation’s young adults are more than capable to do more, do it faster, and take on more responsibility sooner.

Some perspective may help. Air Force B17 bomber pilots, commanders and group leaders in the Second World War were 19 to 21 years old. More than a few were from Connecticut. Commercial airline pilots are first licensed at age 18. By age 21, our undergraduate colleges award a bachelor of science degree in aerospace, chemical, electrical, mechanical, molecular, nuclear, and petroleum engineering, qualifying graduates for the professional engineer designation. They go on to build hypersonic rockets, power plants, surgical robots, steel bridges, high-speed trains, computer code, communications satellites and jet engines. If they can do it, so can the rest of us, each in our own ways. Music is an example: the Hartt School turns teenagers into orchestra musicians, composers and professional jazz performers, while Wesleyan University in Middletown makes them ready to get promptly through medical school. The state junior colleges also produce work-ready graduates in two years.

Faster, Better, Cheaper. That is resolution for higher education.

Matthew G. Andersson is a native of Roxbury, Connecticut, and graduated from the Watkinson School in Hartford. He went to Middlesex College while he was working as a flight instructor in Madison, and subsequently attended Yale College. He received an MBA from the University of Chicago and was a CEO, and management consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton. He is the author of the upcoming book “Legally Blind,” addressing law school reform, and has testified to the U.S. Senate, and the Connecticut General Assembly concerning higher education.