What is it with degrees from Uni's and technical colleges in the US?

NinjaBoy

Ok... Like the title asks, what is it with degrees that are issued either from Universities and technical colleges in the US?

Are degree's issued by technical colleges worth less? eg a lower level or don't have the same amount of credit?

Are degree programs not "regulated" out there?

Or is that the case that the technical colleges degrees aren't on par level wise with degrees issued from Uni's? Or is it that the general concensus is that Uni's are just better?

In the UK each degree must be awarded by a legally approved degree awarding body that has overall responsibility for the academic standards and quality of the qualification.

There are three different types of degrees over here:

Foundation Degree - in the US, it would be the equivalent to an Associates degree
A taught degree, the Bachelors degree
Research degrees - Masters (including MS, MA and the MBA) and the higher Doctorates (including PhD's and MPhil's).

OK, we have two type of education after "High School" - Further Education and Higher Education. High Education would be your academic degrees, etc.

While Further education would be your professional diploma's, etc... With level 6 comparable to a Bachelors level education, level 7 would be comparable to a Masters level education, etc...

With the main choice in the UK when choosing is how much the program is, if the place you want to go actually offers the course you want, what kind of program they teach and the uni life experience that each Uni can offer.

craig88

No great input from me here, but I also wondered the same thing. In the UK unless your degree is from Oxford / Cambridge it matters little where you studied.

Danielm7

Sure, the U.S has regulations, there are different accreditations, and there are schools that aren't accredited. So someone might get a diploma from a non-accredited school and it might be frowned upon by many employers and not able to be used to go for any further education at that point because other schools might not even recognize it. You'll see a lot of threads here about WGU, they are regionally accredited, which is basically what the "regular" schools have, which is a good thing. You'll also see people say they felt they grossly overpaid for a "certificate of PC repair" or something similar because no employer believes it to mean anything.

There are also many different ranks or tiers of schools here in the U.S as well. Even if your school is completely legitimate, if your degree comes from a less known/lower ranked school it is not going to be looked at in the same way as if you got it from a top tier school.

For some people where you got your degree means a huge deal, some don't care, it also depends what you want to do with it. From what I understand if you want to go to the top tier medical or law schools you can't just roam in from any random lower ranked school and get in, I could be wrong though just going on what I've been told.

dmoore44

I think you're somewhat confused with terms...

With respect to the vernacular used in the amongst the TE community, a technical school is generally used in the sense that a given school places a heavy emphasis on science, engineering, and technology programs. The proper term for this type of school would be "Institute of Technology". Technical schools/Institutes of Technology aren't really any different from a University - they both offer four year degree programs. The major difference, as mentioned earlier, is the focus of their academic pursuit.

The term "technical school" is also used interchangeably with "vocational school" to denote a two year school that primarily specializes in preparing a student for a particular job (i.e. a laborer who specializes in a trade [electrician, welder, mechanic], culinary arts, etc...).

Edit to include information about accreditation...

As for accreditation, there are two types of accreditation in the US - regional accreditation and national accreditation. Regional accreditation organizations exist to accredit (certify?) that programs provided at schools in their region meet certain educational requirements as laid out by the US Department of Education. These schools are not focused on profit; they are either purely oriented towards academic pursuits, or are non-profit in nature. The regional accreditation organizations oversee the majority of schools in their region to include primary education (elementary schools), secondary education (middle and high schools), and higher education (colleges, universities, etc...).

National accreditation is generally reserved for for-profit schools of higher education. Since their focus is on profit and not academics, they are generally viewed with suspicion.

networker050184

Name recognition is what it comes down to basically as long as it's accredited.

NetworkVeteran

US Schools offer:

Level of Degree: Doctorate > Master's > Bachelor's > Associate
Class of Degree: Science > Arts
Type of Degree: CS/EE > IT > Other
Rank of School: (see US News rankings)

This is from the perspective of what's most in-demand in the US tech industry. Obviously, if your goal is to become a doctor, lawyer, reverand, or botonist the desireability of various degrees may be quite different.

And the extra ROI for a Doctorate is questionable in today's job market.

Are degree's issued by technical colleges worth less? eg a lower level or don't have the same amount of credit?

As dmoore says, it depends what you mean by a technical school. If it's MIT, one of the top-ranked schools in the country, that's wonderful to put on your resume. If it's DeVry, where you won't earn any of the above, that's nearly useless on it.