The B.A. used to be a good thing in your resume, one is respected as educated person when people learn he or she has studied hard until B.A. degree. Masters and PhD aren’t easy to achieve and not too many, those that got the degrees were very admired.

I am not saying the non-degree holders and A.A. degree holders are stupid or anything of the sort, they do have ways to climb in the workforce and social status, but we are not talking about this so please don’t steer the conversation that way.

Anyway, it used to be like that… Now, B.A. has lost its value in the competitive realm. M.A. has become the new B.A., not too rare anymore but still hold some esteem. PhD has become the new M.A.

I am an undergraduate student and when I talk with my colleagues, both undergraduate and graduate, I noticed an increased frequency of dependency on parents or other means until M.A.. It was common for people to not work for their life sustainability and depend on family or scholarships until B.A.. Now more of them are not stopping at B.A., but at M.A..

Families/scholarship institutions have to spend another 2 years supporting those students to be able to achieve the dream of a respected educated person in the society instead of “oh, another one”.

My question is… How did that happen? Did we somehow get smarter or did the degree programs got easier, allowing more people to acquire the degrees?

I don’t want to think that the U.S. education system has improved the education of its people, because many many would disagree with that, including saying that U.S. is definitely not leading the education in the world. Personally, I haven’t investigated enough to say aye or nay to those claims.

Caro, I think it’s very much the way things went with cell phones, laptop computers and high school diplomas.

For a while after cell phones and laptops first arrived on the scene, it was rare to find them, and those who DID have them were the “elite” or privileged. As technology progressed, cell phones and laptop computers became very inexpensive and lost their elite status.

Similarly, 100 years ago, for a person to have graduated from grade 12 in a public school was a more rare thing, and made one a member of an elite group. Yet today, when most people graduate from high school, that is not so meaningful any more.

Post-secondary education is becoming more and more available. Many people now are choosing to get their bachelor’s degrees rather than to go into the workforce because (1) they have a perception that they will get a much better-paying job in the end, which is not necessarily so, or (2) it is a way of putting off the actual labor of going into the real-world workforce. I know of a few people who were in four-year degree programs and when they reached the end, they found that the job market was so competitive that they decided to go on and get Master’s degrees because they could get scholarships or have Mom & Dad pay for it. That way, they could delay the competition, and perhaps be more competitive when they looked for a job.

It’s probably a combination of factors, really.

That being said, it has long been a dream of many people in the U.S. to have universal college education for everyone. So, some people would say this is a very good thing to have gotten closer to that goal.

(Here’s my cynic’s outlook, too: Open-matriculation programs at a number of smaller colleges have, I believe, diluted the value of a degree. I know of some schools who do not require any entrance exam, merely that you have a high school diploma, or perhaps a GED, in order to enter a degree-seeking program. Many of these colleges have minimal standards for grades and under-qualified professors. When you pump thousands of people through programs like that each year, it devalues the associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.)

For teachers, No Child Left Behind has completely devaluated grad work. As long as you have a grad transcript, whatever goes, so often times the quick and dirty ones are the ones that are granted.

The focus will now shift on the content of these degrees and diversifying subject matter, just as how many Undergraduate majors were originally grouped with three or four others.

Caro, I’m really glad you brought this up! I have been thinking of this for quite some time now and it’s great to have an oportunity to discuss it with my eduFriends! :)

You know, I thought this was a specific problem of the educational system in my country, but right now I realized it happens in other countries as well, probably worldwide. Which is really sad.

I totally agree with Tony’s extensive explanations, I was preapring to write something similar! Instead I’ll tell you that the situation is no different in Romania. Our university system used to be strong under the communist regime (yes, there were some positive aspects of it as well!) – education was free at all levels, but there were very few universities, meaning that only the best students were admitted into superiour education, but after graduation they all became real intellectuals with a solid knowledge in their field. By “superiour education” I mean a Batchelor’s degree. There was no such thing as the M.A., and only very very few outstanding students got to obtain a PhD after long years of serious research.

After the 1988 Revolution (when the communist regime ended), our educational system has been the constant victim of various political regims, but also of the decision to adopt the Bolognia system which regulates superiour education as follows: B.A. – 3 years; M.A. – 2 years; Ph.D – 3 years. The transferable credits system sounds good, but it is not properly applied, and similar curricula throughout Europe are a good idea (oportunities of great scholarships abroad!), but reducing the B.A. to three years was a very, very bad idea. It’s logical that in these conditions the B.A. is greately reduced, and the M.A. becomes a necessity. Don’t even get me started on the horrors of a 3-year undergrad program! :( And I’m certainly NOT looking forward to the day when the Ph.D becomes the standard – after all, what kind of Ph.D is that if you only have 3 years to preapre for it? It’s simply outrageous!

Tony, your cynic’s outlook is unfortunately a fact in my country as well. It’s not uncommon for Romanian B.A. graduates to be employed in a possition under theirqualification or even unemplyed. That’s because every year the marketplace is suffocated by graduates of low-stndard “universities” – I like to call them “idiots with a diploma”, which may sound harsh, but it’s true….

Sorry for the lenght and the lack of coherence of this post, it’s just that I’m genuinly interested in the topic and I have many things to say about it….