On an application to teach at a junior college, they want to know “Level of Credit Hours” for your degree. Does anyone know what this means?
They just want to know if your degree was an undergrad degree or a graduate degree from a particular institution. See, for example, this application.
I don’t think that’s quite what they mean.
Most US bachelor’s degrees are based on 120 semester (as opposed to schools which have a quarterly schedule[sup]1[/sup]) hours. However, many specialized degrees (e.g., pharmacy, physical therapy, engineering, some Fine Arts degrees) have requirements which add up to more hours. The most demanding one I’ve seen was 142 hours (alas, I can’t recall what the major was). If you’ve got a catalog for a large university which has several specialized colleges, I suspect you could readily find some examples.
[sup]1[/sup]A school which operates on the semester system can have three semesters of approximately 15 weeks each. In practice, most have one or two shorter, and consequently much harder, spring/summer terms (usually 7-8 weeks long). A school which operates on the quarter system has four quarters per year, and is thereby set up so as to make it easier for a student to jam through a degree program faster by going year-round (if they can afford it), as the courses offered in spring and summer are the same length as the fall and winter terms. Schools on the quarter system offer fewer credits per quarter for the same courses as schools on the semester system do, as they do not try to work the student harder per credit hour than schools on the traditional calendar. In consequence, a school on the quarter system must require more credits in order to offer equivalent amounts of instruction. Clear as mud? 
Did you look at the application I linked to, which was exactly the sort of application that the OP is filling out, or are you just guessing? The drop down boxes for the “level of credit hours” field had two responses: “graduate” and “undergraduate”. I’d say that’s a pretty clear indication that that is quite what they mean. That phrase isn’t likely to vary from application to application for the same job.
While the phrase “level of credit hours” may mean different things in different contexts, in the context of “application for teaching at a JC”, it means pretty much just what I said.
Yes, I looked at the app you linked to. Are you asserting that it is not merely “an” app, but “the” app? I’ve never worked or taught at a JC, but I know people who have or do. On the basis that the OP was loosely paraphrasing when s/he wrote
I assumed that there might just be more to the question than you had, or the OP would have said, “Thanks,” before I ever got to this thread.
BTW, there are also differences in the number of hours requred for different Master’s degrees. Perhaps the OP would try to provide more information? Does the app have places to list multiple degrees? Does it ask the “level” for each degree?
It could also be asking how many credits for the grad or UG major, for that matter, or level the coursework was at.
I dunno how frequently ccwaterback logs on. I’m afraid we’ll need him/her to tell us if either of us is right, or if we’re both wrong.
I think I better call them to see exactly what they want. I will post here when I find out.
OK, here’s the deal. I talked to the HR people at the JC and they weren’t exactly sure what “Level of Credit Hours” means, but the consensus seemed to be you choose either “undergraduate” or “graduate”. Where this makes the most sense is when you have an undergraduate degree, but you have taken courses after you received your degree, they want to know whether those courses were at the graduate or undergraduate level.
That’s actually almost logical, probably as in, are/were you starting work on a second bachelor’s or a grad degree. But it’s almost too funny that the school itself isn’t quite sure what they’re asking. :rolleyes:
It must be one of those JCs that offer a bunch of non-academic (e.g., real estate (for sales or broker licenses), cooking (the particular school I’m thinking about has a complete two year program run by a master chef, and students who complete it usually have a selection of fancy restaurants offering them jobs), horseback riding (a random sampling of actual courses offered by one of the two JCs I actually know something about)). For such courses, the instructor is usually asked to have at least an associate’s degree, plus some kind of professional license or comparable proof of training and/or competence.
Of course, for academic courses, they generally require a master’s, and for full time tenure track, at least ABD. I did research at a bench next to a tenured associate prof from that school who had been tenured before they started requiring Ph.D.s, and who couldn’t get promoted (or qualify for the highest available salary levels) until she got the doctorate. And the husband of one of my faculty at the second university where I worked was a full prof at the same institution. Some people who enjoy teaching more than publishing go the JC route, because most JCs don’t require publication, just “service to the community.”
Thanks for coming back and clarifying. My apologies to Darwin’s Finch.
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I’ve been offline since Sunday night. Sorry for being so slow to get back.
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