Well, one way of graduating earlier is to do what you did-another tack would be to do what some people are suggesting, and mimic places like Britain (correct me if I'm wrong here) where people mostly take courses in their field of study, with much less gen ed.
Then you have the local community college / votech experience. There's not much difference in the degree requirements between a AS and BS other than a whole lot of liberal arts and one or two senior level classes.
