fast track education

It is a fact that the country is short in math and science majors and the shortage will be worse in the coming years. There are many SOTA’s (students older than average) out there who could use a easier path to a degree to save time and money. I propose a special degree that just focuses on core courses. I majored in Chemistry and took 44 hours of Chemistry, 20 hours of math and 10 hours of Physics. Since Chemistry courses are best taken one after the other it would still take four years but it would be less than 10 hours per semester which would give students time to work and not have to go into debt with student loans. Does this idea have any merit?