Second TESU Bachelors & WGU MS Accounting

[dfrecore]

Hi.  To answer your question in regards to the second degree, see below.
I am very interested in getting a second degree because of the following reasons.

1) I am a lifelong learner and would like to get college credit for learning another subject or concentration
2) In case I no longer want to be in the business field X years down the road, I have something to fall back on
3) I looked at the TESU BALS and it allows concentrations such as Comp Sci or Natural Science, etc
4) I may want to use language ACTFL test and other credit options to get partial LL/UL for the BALS AOS
5) It won't take too long to get the Bachelors degree and the cost would be reimbursed by company
6) I want to use the BALS as a "broader liberal arts education" and BSBA for getting up that corp ladder.

I have debated going directly for the Master's degree vs getting a second bachelors degree.
Most second bachelors require about 10 courses (30 credits), a Masters is 30-36 credits already.
I will be going to graduate school and would like additional accreditations or certifications also.
The only other option was to do a "Double Major" but I don't think we can do that with the BSBA.
Basically, I want to improve my skill set and learn more, build upon my educational base.

Honestly, being a lifelong learner does not have to include a degree.  And, a broader degree is definitely not more useful than a Business degree.  If you want to get out of the business field someday, a business degree and years of experience would probably be a lot more useful than a BALS - even with a concentration (like CompSci, which will not have enough CompSci courses to have most companies consider it equal to a CompSci degree).

Just my opinion, I almost never think a BALS is more useful than a more concentrated major, and I don't think employers do either (being in HR for many years).  I get that you like accumulating credits, but just know that the BALS will probably not do much for you in the future.  But I guess if you don't have to pay for it, it probably doesn't matter a lot to you (and I've worked at companies who would not pay for a BALS at all, but only a degree specific to your job, and then only a 1st degree or Masters, so your company is very generous in their policy).  One thing I guess I might keep in mind: if your company pays for it, are you locked in for a certain number of years?  Because honestly, golden handcuffs might not be worth the price for a BALS when you already have a BSBA.  An MBA or Master's degree would probably be worth it though.  Just my opinion.

One last thing (again coming from an HR perspective): I've seen it many times that an employee took advantage of a loophole in a policy, and after that the company changed the policy to restrict it from whatever that employee was doing.  It would get out that the reason the policy was changed was because XYZ employee did whatever.  Not saying you are doing anything unethical, just that someone higher up in the company at some point may say "why in the heck are we paying for a second degree for this guy when he already has a BSBA?  Did we pay for THAT degree too?"  I personally would not want to be THAT employee.