Degree System of American Universities

The United States has a system of associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. After completing secondary education, students who enter a four-year institution of higher education and complete the first two years of the program, or who only complete a full course of study in arts and sciences at a two-year junior, technical, or community college can obtain an Associate in Arts or Associate in Science degree, and those who complete the corresponding vocational and technical courses can obtain an Associate in Applied Arts or Associate in Applied Science degree; some of the courses of the two-year colleges can be completed in one year or less, and the qualifications obtained are certificates rather than degrees. Qualifications rather than a degree, Associate of Science degree to help seek employment, but its curriculum is more vocational, academic standards are not high, so the United States higher education tradition of "first degree" usually refers to the bachelor's degree; the entrance into the world, the basic degree of undergraduate education.

After graduating from high school with a diploma and successfully completing four years of study at a college or university, a baccalaureate degree can be obtained. A bachelor's degree program in arts and sciences is usually a four-year program with two semesters in each academic year, but there are many colleges and universities that have adopted a three-year system or a three-semester (fall, spring, and summer) system.

It is customary in the United States to award the Bachelor of Arts degree to students studying languages, literature and other literatures, history, and the arts, and the Bachelor of Science degree to students studying social sciences and natural sciences; in addition, professional colleges also offer a variety of professional degrees, because the Bachelor of Arts degree has the longest history of any degree, and so some colleges and universities award all degrees except the Bachelor of Arts degree to students studying the natural sciences, and the Bachelor of Science degree to students studying engineering and applied sciences. Because the Bachelor of Arts is the oldest degree, some institutions awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree to all students except those studying natural sciences and engineering and applied sciences; this phenomenon has now changed.

The first two years of a bachelor's degree program are usually devoted to a broad range of basic subjects, including some compulsory subjects such as English writing, foreign languages, literature, social sciences, and some subjects in the sciences, and the second two years are devoted to a specialized program in which the student chooses a major and two minors; teaching is on the basis of the credit hour system; in institutions with a two-semester academic year, there is either one hour of lecture or two to three hours of practical work a week for each of the fifteen weeks of each semester. In institutions with a two-semester academic year, 1 hour of lecture or 2-3 hours of internship work per week for 15 weeks per semester is counted as one credit, and the bachelor's degree is awarded after 120 credits are completed in 4 years. Students generally take 4-5 courses per semester at the same time. Students generally take 4-5 courses per semester at the same time. The United States currently implements the Associate Bachelor's Degree, which represents four different academic levels for undergraduate and graduate education, respectively. Since the Associate Bachelor's Degree is only the qualification certificate for completing a two-year junior or community college degree, and is not a necessary stage for pursuing a bachelor's degree, the degree system in the United States is still basically a three-level hierarchy. American institutions of higher learning set up a wide range of disciplines and specialties, emerging disciplines and fringe disciplines emerge in an endless stream, so the United States of America's degree variety, up to about 2,000, but according to the nature of the degree, no more than two kinds of academic (research) degrees and professional (professional) degrees; in addition, the United States of America universities also award honorary degrees, this kind of degree does not reflect the academic achievements, but to the recognition of outstanding contributions to the community; in the United States, the degree level between institutions of higher education is the same as that between institutions of higher learning, but it is not the same as that between institutions of higher learning and the degree level. In the United States, the degree level between institutions of higher learning is very inconsistent.

Some institutions allow students to enroll in professional schools in their third or fourth year of college, particularly in law schools, medical schools, and engineering schools, and these students may take more than five years to earn their bachelor's degrees, although some of their undergraduate and graduate education overlap in time.

The master's degree has different meanings at the more than 600 U.S. institutions that grant it, and even in different departments at those institutions. At some institutions, the degree is awarded after five years of study; at others, students must pass a qualifying examination, submit a dissertation, and take a foreign language; sometimes it is the degree of completion of a two-year professional program, such as business administration, or a three-year program of study, such as fine arts. It can also be a second-level professional degree, such as in pharmacology and architecture. Some institutions view the master's degree as a research degree, while others view it as an intermediate step on the ladder to the doctoral degree, which is examinatory in nature, and students often bypass the master's degree and go directly to the doctoral degree, which is used in some institutions, especially prestigious ones, to comfort students who are not qualified for the doctoral degree.

Master's degrees can be broadly divided into two categories: master of arts and sciences degrees, which include master of arts and master of science degrees, and master of science degrees, which are sometimes difficult to distinguish because of differences in the use of the degrees by institutions. A master of arts degree generally requires 24-30 credits of graduate coursework, most of which is in the field of study. A limited number of graduate credits may be transferred from other schools, and the minimum length of study is one year, usually two to three years, and the maximum length is about five years, which varies considerably from institution to institution.

Professional master's degrees are more clearly defined, with the major of study indicated before the title of the degree; their curricula are more compact, their management is stricter, and their reputations are higher, such as the professional master's degrees in business administration, engineering, and fine arts, etc. Because the education authorities of many states have made the master's degree a prerequisite for secondary school teachers to teach and be promoted, the master's degree has become more and more closely associated with the profession of education in recent years. In recent years, about half of all master's degrees have been awarded to education majors, usually the M.Ed. degree, and there has been a proliferation of M.A.E.s at some institutions, which are awarded to liberal arts students preparing for a career in secondary education without a specialization in education or a dissertation, but with practice in teaching in a school. The need to specialize in education has greatly increased the burden on the graduate schools of colleges and universities. Lower admission standards and shoddy workmanship have also occurred from time to time, resulting in a decline in the reputation of the master's degree as a whole. The doctoral degree is the highest degree awarded by institutions of higher education in the United States. Recipients of this degree in many areas of the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities are called doctors of philosophy, regardless of the discipline in which they specialize; the doctor of philosophy degree emphasizes competence in scholarly research as opposed to the professional doctorate degree, which focuses on an applied field of study.

Requirements for the doctoral degree vary from institution to institution, but there are a number of ****similarities; first, students are usually required to take two years of specialized courses, during which they not only increase their overall understanding of their field of study, but are also exposed to, and initially acquainted with, scholarly research methodologies; some graduate programs require doctoral degree candidates to first earn a master's degree, while others allow them to proceed directly to the doctoral degree. Some graduate programs require that doctoral candidates first earn a master's degree, while others allow them to go directly to a doctoral program.

Doctoral degree programs emphasize mastery of a foreign language as a tool for research and as a reflection of the general level of literacy, and students are usually required to take two of three foreign languages, French, German, and Russian, with Oriental languages, such as Chinese, being included as an option in recent years; some institutions have modified the requirement of two foreign languages in some ways, such as by making a more rigorous examination of proficiency in only one language or by using a more rigorous test of proficiency in a foreign language as a basis for a higher degree of study. Some institutions have made some modifications to the two foreign language requirement, such as more rigorous testing of students' proficiency in only one foreign language or replacing one foreign language with a specialized course, such as having economics students take an additional math or statistics course.

In addition to completing a full course of study and fulfilling the foreign language requirement, a student pursuing a doctoral degree must pass a set of comprehensive exams in the field of specialization, either written, oral, or both; the student's results are reviewed by a committee of professors in the program (or by the faculty of the department as a whole) to determine whether or not he or she is sufficiently well qualified to write a dissertation; the student does not receive a doctorate until he or she has passed such comprehensive exams. The student is not officially qualified for doctoral candidacy until he or she has passed this comprehensive examination, which is also known as the qualifying examination. After passing the qualifying examination, the doctoral candidate usually has to make an opening presentation to the professorial committee in order to obtain the committee's approval of the topic of the doctoral dissertation. The final stage of the doctoral degree is the writing of a doctoral dissertation, which in earlier times was required to be a significant and creative contribution to the field of knowledge and specialization, but nowadays is emphasized for its value as a training of overall scholarly research skills; a doctoral dissertation may be completed in one year or may take several years, depending on a variety of factors such as the standards of each university, the difficulty of the topic, and the degree of diligence and ability of the doctoral candidate; many students are required to complete a doctoral dissertation in one year or in a few years. Many students find a full-time job after passing the doctoral qualifying exams, so the time available for writing the doctoral dissertation is greatly reduced. U.S. institutions usually require that the duration of the Ph.D. degree in philosophy be no more than 3-4 years for full-time students, but in practice it is often exceeded; generally speaking, it takes longer to complete a doctoral degree in the social sciences and humanities than in science and engineering, but the time required to complete a doctoral degree is much longer. takes longer but has a lower success rate compared to the sciences and engineering.

In most institutions, after completing the doctoral dissertation and meeting other relevant requirements, the student undergoes a final examination; this is usually an oral examination limited to the content of the doctoral dissertation and related areas of specialization, and the prospective doctoral candidate is required to give a public defense of the value, arguments, and rationale of his or her dissertation, which is announced in advance in a public notice published by the university on a large or small scale and attended by anyone who is interested. Other doctoral degrees, such as the doctor of education or the doctor of science degree, are obtained in much the same way as the doctor of philosophy degree.

U.S. universities used to require publication of doctoral dissertations, but the rising cost of printing and the proliferation of doctoral dissertations have made this requirement obsolete, and doctoral dissertations are now usually preserved on microfilm, or the author pulls out portions of the dissertation and publishes them in professional journals.

Professional degrees in the United States, such as those in law and medicine, reflect high professional rather than academic standards; for example, the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) is a professional degree awarded to students who qualify to be physicians, while the Doctor of Philosophy (M.P.D.) is a research degree that recognizes the recipient's overall scientific competence; in other words, the former is competent to practise medicine and the latter to teach. competent in research and teaching.

The total curriculum of a program usually consists of basic theory and practical application of specialized theory, and applicants must complete certain undergraduate courses in order to be admitted to a professional school. Medical schools usually require students to complete premedical courses focusing on biology and chemistry, law schools require students to have a solid foundation in the social sciences, and engineering schools usually require students to first obtain a bachelor's degree in engineering; the length of the professional curriculum varies; training for the M.D. degree usually requires 3-4 years of undergraduate education and 4 years of medical school; medical school graduates are required to work as interns for one year and to pass the licensing examination before they can practice medicine, and if they do, they are required to pass the licensing examination. exams to practice medicine, with additional years of internship required if the student wishes to become a specialist; the Bachelor of Divinity degree usually requires four years of undergraduate and three years of seminary professional education, and the Bachelor of Laws degree generally requires four years of undergraduate and three years of law school professional education; in professions such as social work, librarianship, and business administration, a master's degree has been generally accepted as a sign of professional eligibility. The postdoctoral position in the United States is not a first-degree after the doctoral degree, but a kind of supplement to the doctoral degree, which is a transitional position set up for those who have obtained the doctoral degree to continue to engage in research in certain scientific research institutions. There is no strict teaching structure and form of postdoctoral education, and after postdoctoral researchers have completed a stage of research in a certain place, that is to say, they will be transferred to the place where they are suitable for their own work to be inaugurated or to another place to continue postdoctoral research. According to different professional levels, postdoctoral fellows are divided into three grades: junior postdoctoral fellows in the first two years after obtaining a doctoral degree; intermediate postdoctoral fellows in the period of 3-5 years; and senior postdoctoral fellows in the period of more than 5 years; postdoctoral education contributes to the cultivation of talents and the carrying out of academic research, and also serves as a buffer to alleviate the pressure of looking for a full-fledged job after graduating from the university. Postdoctoral education has become an important part of U.S. higher education.