What are the limitations of transferring an AAS to a four year program?

[Pelican]

I am going back to school for a career change. In the new field, an AS/AAS is all that is needed, so that is what I am working towards. In the future, a four year degree in the field would help with later advancement, but it is unnecessary now.

Unfortunately, every school in my state with the required program offers an AAS, not an AS. I have read that an AAS is a terminal degree, so people can't use them to transfer to a 4-year program. These degrees only have about 9 credits outside of the major.

Is this limitation of transferring to a 4-year college because they don't require general education courses, such as world history and English? As such, would my prior liberal arts BA likely offset the limitations of having an AAS when transferring?

Or are the actual credits deemed "not college level" or "too applied", and so can't be used for transfer, as they don't provide enough theory?

In the short term, an AAS is the best kind of degree I need to change careers. But in the long term, I worry that will limit my ability for further study and advancement.

[davewill]

In most cases an associate's doesn't transfer, the individual credits do. Only in cases where there is a specific articulation agreement in place between the schools is an associate's "block transferred". It's most common where states require that their 4 year public colleges accept the state's community college degrees as a block.

By getting an AAS, you may fall outside those rules, it depends on the two schools. You will still have 60 college credits that can transfer somewhere, you'll just have less GenEds done than you would if you'd done an AA/AS degree. You may also find that if your AAS is in IT, but you want a BA in, say, English, that you won't have many of the right credits done.

Edit: I just reread your post and saw the prior BA. Yeah, that makes the whole question moot. You already have all the college credit you need for any future transfer scenarios.

[dfrecore]

I'm not understanding why you're worried about transferring your AAS when you already have a BA? Can you give some sort of scenario where this would be an issue? Where you would be "tranferring" rather than just going to get a 2nd BA in something?

With a BA already in hand, another school is not going to consider you a transfer student. You'd just be going for a 2nd degree (if at all), so you're treated completely differently than a student who only has an AA/AS/AAS and 60cr. It's a completely different animal.