Accelerated BAS to Masters... Issue or non-issue?

[FireMedic_Philosopher]

So, we have discussed the creation of 3-year long Bachelor of Applied Science degrees on this forum before.... and according to articles like this one, the acreditors are ending the "pilot program" periods and approving the roll out of more majors....

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/stud...eac8594a24

My question is this: Granting the point is to let students enter the workforce faster by elimination of electives, how would a BAS impact a student that requires some grad credits, if not a masters to enter the workforce?
I know many colleges now have "accelerated" masters programs where a BS or BA student takes graduate classes their senior year INSTEAD OF electives and graduates with a BA/BS and a masters after 5 years.
The article says grad schools may or may not look kindly on a 3 year BAS applying for a graduate program... but the 5-year programs effectively already teach a 3 year bachelor's (with electives being replaced by graduate classes). 
What are everyone's thoughts?

[ss20ts]

BAS isn't the issue one may have. The issue some may run into is that some grad programs require a 120 undergrad credits. If it was a BA or BS or BPS or BLS or any other bachelor's degree with 90 credits that could have the same issue.

The year programs include a master's so there's no issue getting a master's. The college applied grad courses to the undergrad program. These 2 situations are like comparing apples to oranges.

[freeloader]

I suspect there will be some schools that will accept these 90 credit bachelor's degrees as being equivalent to a 120/120+ credit bachelor's degree, while others will require students to complete additional undergraduate credits.  There are a number of universities that offer a 1-year bridge program, typically offering 30 undergraduate credits, so that people with 3-year foreign degrees that have been evaluated as the equivalent of 90 US semester hours can meet standards for admissions to US graduate programs.  For universities that typically allow undergraduate students to complete graduate coursework, I wouldn't be surprised if schools offered bridge programs with, say, 24 undergraduate credits and 6 graduate credits, with the latter being applied subsequently to the master's degree.

I also suspect there will be universities that offer integrated graduate programs leading toward a master's degree that include a mix of undergraduate and graduate credits for students with these degrees.  There are Master of Science in Nursing programs, for instance, that are built for students who have a ASN + RN but not BSN.  The BSN is typically earned on the way to the MSN.  Perhaps schools would grant people a 2nd bachelor's degree or perhaps they would forgo that and only award the master's degree.

For those universities requiring additional studies beyond the 90 credits before students can be formally admitted to graduate studies, I think the really interesting thing to see will be what additional coursework the universities require.  As I understand it, the idea behind a lot of these 90 credit bachelor's degrees is primarily to reduce the liberal arts component of the degree typically completed in the first two years and elective credits, but to require the same or virtually the same major credits with supporting credits (e.g., math credits for scientific and technical fields).  If a student has a degree in IT with plenty of IT, CS, IS, and math coursework but not enough English, history, art, music, and foreign language courses to meet typical 4-year bachelor's degree requirements, is the university going to say to that student "you need to complete a year's worth of lower level, gen ed courses before we can admit you to our master's program?"  If that's the case, this would also feel like a really good opportunity for CLEPs and other alternative sources of credit.  CLEP cited here since it, along with AP, are the most widely accepted alternate credit providers.

[SteveFoerster]

As I understand it, it's typically electives that are being lopped off, not general education courses. And the math works out: a full 36 semester-hours of gen eds and a major of 54 semester-hours means 90 semester-hours total.

As for whether grad schools will accept them for admissions, so far we can really only speculate. But generally speaking this whole thing is something of a race to the bottom, so if I had to bet then my money would be on grad schools accepting the 90 semester-hour Bachelor degree without further requirements lest they lose those students to more permissive institutions.

[FireMedic_Philosopher]

As I understand it, it's typically electives that are being lopped off, not general education courses. And the math works out: a full 36 semester-hours of gen eds and a major of 54 semester-hours means 90 semester-hours total.

As for whether grad schools will accept them for admissions, so far we can really only speculate. But generally speaking this whole thing is something of a race to the bottom, so if I had to bet then my money would be on grad schools accepting the 90 semester-hour Bachelor degree without further requirements lest they lose those students to more permissive institutions.

It is the "race to the bottom" that ultimately bothers me as well... and it will likely create creep at other tiers.

Eventually I suppose we will see shorter 1 year Applied Masters degrees or maybe even 2 year applied doctorates in fields like IT or CS...

[wow]

Eventually I suppose we will see shorter 1 year Applied Masters degrees or maybe even 2 year applied doctorates in fields like IT or CS...

Aren't one-year master's fairly common already? Less so ones geared toward moving on to a PhD, but I feel like I have seen a lot, although they still tend to have 30-36 semester credits.

But maybe you are lamenting the possibility of 18- to 24-credit "masters" that until now would have been considered "certificates"?

[ss20ts]

Eventually I suppose we will see shorter 1 year Applied Masters degrees or maybe even 2 year applied doctorates in fields like IT or CS...

Aren't one-year master's fairly common already? Less so ones geared toward moving on to a PhD, but I feel like I have seen a lot, although they still tend to have 30-36 semester credits.

But maybe you are lamenting the possibility of 18- to 24-credit "masters" that until now would have been considered "certificates"?

Most master's degrees are 30-36 credits. Most people don't complete them in 1 year as they aren't enrolled full time. Typically takes 2+ years to complete a master's degree. Most people are working and can't take courses full time. 

I have completed 1 grad certificate that was 12 credits. I'm currently working on a grad certificate that is 18 credits. They're definitely not the same as a master's degree. The courses requirements are pretty different. Grad certificates typically skip the grad research and writing courses, statistics courses, and the capstone/thesis/project course.

[wow]

Eventually I suppose we will see shorter 1 year Applied Masters degrees or maybe even 2 year applied doctorates in fields like IT or CS...

Aren't one-year master's fairly common already? Less so ones geared toward moving on to a PhD, but I feel like I have seen a lot, although they still tend to have 30-36 semester credits.

But maybe you are lamenting the possibility of 18- to 24-credit "masters" that until now would have been considered "certificates"?

Most master's degrees are 30-36 credits. Most people don't complete them in 1 year as they aren't enrolled full time. Typically takes 2+ years to complete a master's degree. Most people are working and can't take courses full time. 

I have completed 1 grad certificate that was 12 credits. I'm currently working on a grad certificate that is 18 credits. They're definitely not the same as a master's degree. The courses requirements are pretty different. Grad certificates typically skip the grad research and writing courses, statistics courses, and the capstone/thesis/project course.

I think we're having different conversations here. I'm just trying to understand what FireMedic Philosopher is saying re: "shorter 1 year Applied Masters degrees" and how that would be different from existing one-year masters that are about the same number of credits as two-year ones. 

But we could be off-topic.

[ss20ts]

Aren't bachelor's degrees in Europe and Canada about 90 credits? From what I remember they don't have a bunch of elective credits like we do in the US. If those degrees are valid for grad programs, why would it be different for US bachelor's degrees that are 90 credits? Seems like reducing 30 credits of electives may not be a bad thing. It takes 1 year less to complete (or longer if you're part time) and saves students a small fortune. Grad programs will most likely adapt as these become more common. I don't think we're going to see them go away.

[Jonathan Whatley]

Aren't bachelor's degrees in Europe and Canada about 90 credits? From what I remember they don't have a bunch of elective credits like we do in the US. If those degrees are valid for grad programs, why would it be different for US bachelor's degrees that are 90 credits? Seems like reducing 30 credits of electives may not be a bad thing. It takes 1 year less to complete (or longer if you're part time) and saves students a small fortune. Grad programs will most likely adapt as these become more common. I don't think we're going to see them go away.

In Canada, there are two types of bachelor’s degrees, three-year (90 cr equiv.) and four-year (120 cr equiv.). The three-year bachelor’s are often called General degrees (even though they aren’t in general studies) and the four-year are often called Honours degrees, and sometimes granted postnominals like BSc(Hons) or HBSc. The difference between a three-year and four-year degree is very largely additional upper-level courses in the major.

The four-year bachelor’s is now more common in Canada and the general trend over the past few decades has been away from three-year programs toward four-year. A three-year bachelor’s is generally unlikely to get you into a scholarly academic graduate program, but may get you into some professional programs like law, medicine, or a postbac teaching degree.