Over on this thread Obsidian posted a chart that showed income for different levels of education. As far as graduate level degrees there were masters, doctorates and professional degrees. WHat is a professional degree? Is it a doctorate that is considered a discipline in and of itself? ie, a doctorate in anthropology is just an advanced version of a bachelors in anthropology and a doctorate in biology is just an advanced version of a bachelors in biology , but a doctorate in medicine is not an advanced version of a bachelors in medicine since there isn’t one and may not even be related to the undergraduate degree you get before it (some medical students study biology, some chemistry, some mathematics, some art, etc)?
If that is the definition (which I am guessing it is, professional degrees are stand alone doctoral graduate degrees not related to the undergrad degrees of the people who get them and they are degrees that don’t have undergraduate counterpart degrees) what are the professional degrees? Pharmacist, lawyer, physician, veternarian, etc? What else?
There are tons depending on how broadly you define “professional degree”. Clinical psychologists in general are one although there is a degree called a Psy.D. that is purely professional and doesn’t require much research. Along that line, there are counseling and advanced social work programs that allow people to see patients.
There is advanced practice nursing which includes things like nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists in many disciplines. That take on many of the same duties as doctors.
When I went to my orientation for grad students at UC Berkeley, there were a few groups that people were supposed to break out into.
There were Masters candidates, Ph.D. candidates, JD candidates, MBA candidates, and then a group for “Other Professional degree candidates”.
So, since I was studying for a Masters in Library and Information Studies, I went to “Other Professional degree candidates”. I then noticed a whole bunch of people coming up to me and asking “You’re in the MLS program aren’t you? Is this where we go?”
I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.
It’s become murky. Who, these days, is a professional?
In days of old, it was pretty much bankers, lawyers and doctors.
I hold only a bachelor’s degree, but I am licensed by the state in my discipline. So I guess that makes me a bona-fide “-ist.” The company for whom I toil lists me amongst their professional staff.
The classic learned professions are (were) law, medicine and theology. There is however no money in theology unless you go into the tele-evangel business. As a confirmed traditionalist I maintain that professional degrees are in law, medicine (and almost related healing arts, like psychology and dentistry) and theology. So there.
Engineering is a typically ranked in the “Professional degrees” if the person having the engineering degree gets their Professional license from the State.
Optometry is another one, besides medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, law, and theology (also sometimes called divinity). Engineering degrees also have special names, and engineers get some special rights here, like being able to guarantee a passport application. I’m not sure how it is for architecture, advanced degrees in nursing, or music (which has its own degrees).
It’s somewhat frustrating that certain M.Sc. --> Ph.D. tracks are not considered ‘professional’, because they don’t lead to jobs that were common and respected in 1850 and don’t have special names. You wouldn’t want someone to practice nuclear physics if they didn’t have an advanced degree in it, but that’s not considered a professional degree. (For the purpose of endorsing passport applications, which is probably a fairly good measure of who is a ‘professional’, university professors are ‘professionals’. AFAIK an engineer who is qualified but not practicing is sufficient, but a Ph.D. physicist who is not a university professor is not.
As a very, very broad definition, a “professional degree” is the degree required to become licensed or credentialed, and thus allowed to practice in a profession. Licensing is taken care of by the government, while credentialing is done by an accrediting organization (although some states call their licenses “certifications.”)
This gets very confusing. To teach in a public school, for example, a teacher might need a Bachelor’s degree and a teaching certificate. The degree does not need to be in Education, however, the Bachelor’s degree in Education will include the coursework needed to become certified. For that reason, the Education degree is considered a “professional degree.”
Ditto, for example, with nursing. It’s possible in some states to complete a two-year program in nursing and take the test to become a Registered Nurse, but the 4-year Nursing degree includes the course work you need.
To complicate things even more, some schools refer to “first professional” and “terminal professional” degrees in some areas. The first professional degree would be the bare minimum, while the terminal degree is the highest degree (either Master or Doctoral) that a school grants in that profession.
Roches is right in that some highly specialized fields don’t require “professional” degrees, while other, less technically demanding fields, do. That evolves, however. When my mother graduated from Nursing school way back when, that was pretty much all she had to do to become a Registered Nurse. 25 years later, though, she decided to renew her license and had to take a battery of courses and tests to get the same certification she would have had if she had bothered to send in her renewal fee every year.
The way I see it, at the post-bachelors level, a professional degree is anything other than one of the pure academic degrees, M.A., M.S. and Ph.D.
In general, if you are getting your masters in arts or science or a Ph.D., you will be taking an academic course of study, including course work, that culminates in the writing of a thesis or dissertation based on original research in an area of your choosing.
On the other hand, most other advanced degree programs are structured so that you take a series of course work that fits into the requirements of the program. For instance, an M.D. program will have clinical and course work in medicine, but will not focus on original research. Likewise with a J.D., M.B.A., M.S.W., M.L.S. M.Ed., etc. for their respective fields. Although there are sometimes research and writing requirements, they are usually less stringent than the masters thesis or doctoral dissertation requirements.
At the bachelors level, it is similar, with programs for degrees other than a B.A. or B.S. being considered professional, but there is generally less distinction drawn.
Not absolutely. One of the commonly accepted criteria of a profession is that member gain entry by some sort of licensure * by the members of that profession*. It’s not always the government doing the testing, either (although it’s certainly the case for some professions).
Roches, your post seemed to indicate a normative aspect to the term “professional” but I don’t think it’s appropriate in this context. Heck, some people feel the opposite, that “academic” degrees are more prestigious than “professional” degrees. Snort. That’s neither here nor there, but generally the debate over whether a degree program is professional or not does not hinge on how highly it’s thought of but rather a set of more objective criteria about the field.