Degree course to pursue MA in Human Rights

[bjcheung77]

I'll copy from my other post and stick it into this thread

Doodlebabe, don't let prerequisites scare you. Most MBA programs require X courses for business preparation, there are many that don't require any prerequisites and if there are, a couple up to 3 or 4 courses are required. My suggestion is to "find the Masters" degree program of choice, and see what prerequisites there are, while you're taking the BALS, take those required courses.

The BALS is so flexible, it has 17-20 credits for general education (take any arts/science course you need), and 27 free electives that can be anything (take all business courses here), there are up to 47 credits of your choice to prepare you for the MBA. You don't have to have a BSBA to get into an MBA, but you still need to have X courses to full their requirements, each school is different.

Excelsior: None, no GRE/GMAT required (but expensive)
Hodges: None, no GRE/GMAT required
Patten: No GRE/GMAT, requires Microeconomics, College Algebra
TESU: No GRE/GMAT, (but expensive), requires Financial Accounting, Statistics, and Microeconomics
WGU: No GRE/GMAT, Bachelors + 3 years experience

Heriot-Watt (UK) - None (no bachelors required, 10 exams, roughly $10,000 total)
New Charter (Nationally Accredited) - Same as Patten (Microeconomics, College Algebra)
Taft (Nationally Accredited) - None, pretty inexpensive
UofPeople (Nationally Accredited) - None, pretty inexpensive
TLDR - Find whatever school you're looking for and their requirements, complete them en route to BALS

[sanantone]

How do you find jobs in human trafficking? I am very interested in that field as well. I was thinking of going to a local volunteer thing but will see.

I work in IT now. so it is a little different than fighting human trafficking.

I have been reading books on human trafficking and would like to learn more and get more involved.


BTW nations university 84 credits for Masters in Divinity that is insane.  I will be there for 4-5 years with having to do that many credits

MDiv programs were typically 72 credit hours. Now, a good number have moved to 96 credit hours. Might as well go straight from a bachelor's to a PhD in something that actually pays. 

There aren't really human trafficking jobs just like there aren't really homeland security jobs. That's why I have an issue with homeland security programs. They make people believe they can get that degree and just start working in a homeland security position. Saying that you want to work in human trafficking or homeland security is meaningless. What do you actually want to do? Homeland security is handled by law enforcement , intelligence analysts, operatives, high-ranking government officials, the military, and even scientists and computer scientists. You don't just walk into a homeland security job, and most people who work in homeland security do not have homeland security degrees. Which degree you should get depends on what you want to do. 

There are a lot of different careers that deal with human trafficking. Do you want to work directly with victims at a non-profit helping them get back on their feet? Get a human services-related degree (psychology, sociology, criminology/CJ, social work, counseling, etc.). Do you want to help victims with their legal problems? Go to law school. Do you want to work in an international capacity? Get a degree in international relations or political science and start from the bottom at an NGO or government agency. Do you want to catch perpetrators? Get a degree that's desirable by the FBI (law, computer science, accounting, etc.) or gain local law enforcement experience to increase your chances of getting hired by the FBI. Border Patrol or Customs and Border Protection? You can have a degree in anything to get in or gain experience as a security guard with just a high school diploma. If you want to work in state law enforcement, you may not even need a bachelor's degree. In law enforcement, you normally have to wait to get into a unit or division that deals with human trafficking. 

I would not advise going straight for an MBA or MPA. If you have no experience, you're not going to be in a management position. The MBA or MPA will make you overeducated and underqualified experience-wise. An MDiv is not going to do you any good unless you plan to become a chaplain or work for a religious organization.

[Doodlebabe]

I'll copy from my other post and stick it into this thread

Doodlebabe, don't let prerequisites scare you. Most MBA programs require X courses for business preparation, there are many that don't require any prerequisites and if there are, a couple up to 3 or 4 courses are required. My suggestion is to "find the Masters" degree program of choice, and see what prerequisites there are, while you're taking the BALS, take those required courses.

The BALS is so flexible, it has 17-20 credits for general education (take any arts/science course you need), and 27 free electives that can be anything (take all business courses here), there are up to 47 credits of your choice to prepare you for the MBA. You don't have to have a BSBA to get into an MBA, but you still need to have X courses to full their requirements, each school is different.

Excelsior: None, no GRE/GMAT required (but expensive)
Hodges: None, no GRE/GMAT required
Patten: No GRE/GMAT, requires Microeconomics, College Algebra
TESU: No GRE/GMAT, (but expensive), requires Financial Accounting, Statistics, and Microeconomics
WGU: No GRE/GMAT, Bachelors + 3 years experience

Heriot-Watt (UK) - None (no bachelors required, 10 exams, roughly $10,000 total)
New Charter (Nationally Accredited) - Same as Patten (Microeconomics, College Algebra)
Taft (Nationally Accredited) - None, pretty inexpensive
UofPeople (Nationally Accredited) - None, pretty inexpensive
TLDR - Find whatever school you're looking for and their requirements, complete them en route to BALS

Thank you!! I'm finding myself spending hours on here bouncing around threads trying to find what I'm looking for, even when I use the search function.   And you gave him some extra options to consider! Glad to see how these stack up. I spent some time after my last response looking at our state universities and Stanford, Harvard, and Yale just to see what was standard and lo and behold, worrying about undergrad degree really is wasting energy! 
Love this community and how helpful you all are! Life-changing!

[rlw74]

Btw, Nations also has Masters in Theology and the number of credits needed are about half of what you need for the MDiv. Just an idea of that works.

[Helgon]

Check out this website.

https://www.humanrightscareers.com/masters/

They list human rights masters degrees. Primarily low tuition or tuition free degrees or degrees with scholarships. It's pretty useful.

[cookderosa]

Hey, I'm brand new here and only discovered the whole testing out method over the weekend. I'm a researcher by nature and have been pouring over as much info (including from these forums) as possible trying to figure this out. I've reached out to TESU twice (not very helpful) and Excelsior (still no response two days later) so at this point it's about cheap, fast, and able to get me to the career I want ;-)
A bit about me: I want to pursue a Masters in Human Rights or similar. All the programs I'm interested in are in Europe and the majority of them only require a BA in law, social sciences, or similar, as well as recommendations and experience, etc. The strictest educational requirements I've found is 90 credits in social sciences with a C grade or better. So I have some wiggle room here.
Was initially thinking TESU BA International Studies but that seems impossible solely through testing out. Not sure if a BA in LS will look appealing to European schools or not. English? History? Sociology? Anybody have experience in Masters for human rights/intl relations?

Would love some guidance on which degree would work best, as well as some help test planning. Have not submitted transcripts yet, will probably send them in two weeks or so (how long it'll take for me to receive them from my previous schools). Should I go ahead and send to the Big 3 or just TESU?

Credits I have from AP tests and 2 universities:
AP Western Civ - 6cr (Hist 102 and 103)
AP English Comp - 3cr (Writing 121)
Foundations of Christian Life - 4.5cr
Intro to Sociology - 3cr
Principles of Statistics - 3cr (lab was "general credit")
Comparative Cultures - 3cr (anthropology)
Intro to the Visual Arts - 4cr
General Biology (102) - 4cr
Women: Self and Society - 3cr
Literature of American Minorities - 3cr
Human Sexuality - 3cr
Infant and Child Development - 4cr
General Psych - 3cr
Intro to Animal Sciences - 4cr
General Chemistry (121) - 5cr

Total of 55.5 raw credits, 62.5 credits with "general credits" included (I transferred from a semester to quarterly school and that was their way of accepting the differing crediting systems)

---

Oh, and I have a Cornerstone course from one of those schools. Any chance I could use that instead of taking Capstone with TESU? ;-P (long shot but worth asking! It's one of my "general" credits)

Your AP credits won't be 9, they'll be 12. "Credits" from an assessment aren't evaluated based on what another school awarded- they are awarded fresh with each transfer, and at TESU, you'll get 6 credits for each of those assuming a score of 3 or better.

[SweetSecret]

How do you find jobs in human trafficking? I am very interested in that field as well. I was thinking of going to a local volunteer thing but will see.

I work in IT now. so it is a little different than fighting human trafficking.

I have been reading books on human trafficking and would like to learn more and get more involved.


BTW nations university 84 credits for Masters in Divinity that is insane.  I will be there for 4-5 years with having to do that many credits

First off, I have experience in this and am heavily involved in the anti-sex trafficking community. You can find jobs in human trafficking all over the place, but you really need to decide what you want to be doing and who you want to work with. For example, working with trafficked migrant farm workers is a totally different ballgame than people who have experienced sex trafficking. Within sex-trafficking there are also divisions for domestic, international, adults, or minors. Also, the community tends to be very leery of outsiders in order to protect clients from being re-trafficked. If you get into volunteering don't expect to be hired by the non-profit you are volunteering with as they tend to prefer the free work. However, getting into volunteering can allow you to hear about other job opportunities that may not be advertised. I will say though that if you have not actually experienced trafficking yourself then the positions you might end up working could be farther removed from the clients that what you might want. Organizations know that people who have experienced trafficking often have difficulty finding work, and are great at providing peer support, so there is a heavy preference to hire people with lived experiences in trafficking. The communities most affected by sex trafficking have a well known saying "Nothing about us without us". If you have not actually experienced trafficking I would not expect to be doing any sort of long-term intense work directly with those who are coming out of trafficking experiences. People want to think this only happens with people who are poor and/or uneducated, but that is not the case, and the last thing most of them want is someone who might think of them as being less capable than they truly are... which is why having people with lived experiences actually taking these jobs is so important.

For general jobs in trafficking check Indeed.com and this list:
http://www.endslaverynow.org/act/job-opportunities

Also, an MDiv for the trafficking community would really limit your options for work so I would not suggest that path. People who have experienced sex trafficking are often hesitant about anything associated with religion due to feeling and actually being judged. Plus, the MDiv degrees in trafficking tend to really skim over what trafficking is about and is not especially useful. People coming out of these situations need solid support in getting their lives back together. Unless a person has an MDiv with a degree in counseling that they can give an actual DSM diagnosis which will help them get a diagnosis for PTSD or depression from the trafficking, which in turn can help them access short-term government financial support, then the MDiv is not going to be someone high up on the list of important people to talk to. Generally when people first come out of these experiences they need immediate access to housing, food, medical, legal, peer support and/or counseling, and eventually work opportunities when they are done taking care of themselves in the other ways. 

I will second the MicroMasters Program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy as a great option. That would actually be useful in legislative policy work, advocacy work, and in terms of collecting data for grant writing. It's something I had looked at and it transfers into the Harvard Extension Masters in Development Practice.
https://www.extension.harvard.edu/mitx-m...ice-degree

Quick questions!
1) Has anyone done the BALS here and was accepted into an MBA program (Patten, Hodges, or elsewhere)?

Yes, and I am currently doing the Walden MBA but was also accepted at WGU.