Timeline for What are "BS" and "BA" degrees?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
25 events
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| Nov 11 at 19:03 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | Oh yeah, that's fair. Hopefully, accreditation is keeping things from being wildly different, but the granularity of re-accreditation processes isn't very fine, from what I've seen. | |
| Nov 11 at 19:02 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @ToddWilcox Yes, I meant "by title alone." | |
| Nov 11 at 18:59 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | "In general, there is no way to compare a BA from School A to a BS in School B" - my experience is the course catalogs and transcripts are how one could compare, at least one a surface level. Obviously it doesn't help if, say, "Advanced Linear Algebra" at one school covers very different topics from "Linear Algebra II" at another school (hypothetical examples). Still, the programs I have direct experience with have objectively different course catalogs (e.g., Math BS has more calculus than Math BA, Music BM has more aural skills and conducting than Music BA). | |
| Nov 10 at 14:52 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @buffy gotcha. That is why I said STEM not the sciences | |
| Nov 10 at 14:44 | comment | added | Buffy | I'm just adding context, actually, not suggesting changes. | |
| Nov 10 at 14:42 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @Buffy I’m not sure what you are suggesting changing in my answer | |
| Nov 9 at 15:41 | comment | added | Buffy | Let me note that the methodologies of pure math and most other sciences, physics, chemistry, etc. are very different. Both are different from the methodologies of the humanities; history, philosophy, and the like. Math "seems" scientific to many, but it isn't. I'll also note that a math department might, in the US, be situated within the "School of liberal arts" or the engineering "School" or others. The "schools" answer to different deans within a university. And, yes, applied math has lots of overlap with the sciences in its methodology. | |
| Nov 9 at 13:29 | history | edited | Azor Ahai -him- | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 9 at 13:24 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @cpast Learning something every day | |
| Nov 9 at 13:10 | comment | added | cpast | “only BSes would be odder, but may be out there.” The service academies award everyone a BS. | |
| Nov 8 at 20:56 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Fair enough. Seems to be a morass of many potentially overlapping assumptions for different institutions. | |
| Nov 8 at 20:55 | history | edited | Azor Ahai -him- | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 8 at 20:55 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @JonCuster I dunno, I'm not in math and you're the one bringing up accreditation agencies, haha. Added a note - let me know if you have more specific details to add. | |
| Nov 8 at 20:53 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Yeah, just making it more difficult to untangle… who accredited it, one organization? | |
| Nov 8 at 20:53 | history | edited | Azor Ahai -him- | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 8 at 20:52 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @JonCuster This program was in the College of Arts and Sciences. | |
| Nov 8 at 20:49 | comment | added | Jon Custer | There are a number of accreditation organizations. Some are more anal than others about specific requirements. But, my observation is that a BS vs a BA in math would have more hard science (with lab) requirements for example if they were both offered. Otherwise it comes down to which part of the university the department fell under - School of Arts vs School of Sciences. | |
| Nov 8 at 20:44 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @JonCuster Whose regulation would that be? I'll add it to the answer, but this was a friend's program, not mine. | |
| Nov 8 at 20:42 | comment | added | Jon Custer | The BS in math may have required a chemistry class (or similar) that the BA did not. Just tick-the-box requirements of various accreditation orgs. | |
| Nov 8 at 19:31 | history | edited | Azor Ahai -him- | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 8 at 19:10 | comment | added | John Omielan | Re: "A BA in math ...", note that I got a BMath (Bachelor of Mathematics) degree in 1987 from the University of Waterloo (in Ontario, Canada), since it has a Math faculty instead of math being just a department in a different faculty (e.g., Science or Arts). Somewhat interestingly, at the time, computer science was a department within the Math faculty, so computer science students also usually got BMath degrees. This shows there are additional Bachelor designations apart from those you listed, though I don't offhand know of any additional ones. | |
| Nov 8 at 18:45 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @Buffy Ah yes, I didn't mean to suggest that was the only way programs may divide their degrees. May edit later along with Jon's suggestions. | |
| Nov 8 at 18:42 | comment | added | Buffy | Actually, my BA in math wasn't because I was headed to be a HS teacher (never was). It was because I was also interested in things other than math (my major) such as Philosophy, and took some advanced courses. I chose BA because I thought at the time that it indicated I was a "widely educated" person rather than a narrowly educated one. There was a list of requirements for each degree and I met all requirements for both. Only one degree would be awarded, however. It wasn't a double major, just a choice of designations on my part. | |
| Nov 8 at 17:12 | comment | added | Jon Custer | Sometimes at least the distinction is what organizations accredit the degree. | |
| Nov 8 at 16:41 | history | answered | Azor Ahai -him- | CC BY-SA 4.0 |