Page 335 - Crisis in Higher Education

Revamping Relationships • 305

bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees, as well as certificates and train-
ing programs that improve knowledge and skills.
Originally, many people thought a two-year technical degree was
a terminal degree where students gained specific knowledge about
processes and procedures related to hands-on vocations. These people
were not expected to shift to fields like management (business), design
(engineering), research (science), or government (political science). States
are pressing institutions to provide educational opportunities to these
very capable technical specialists without asking them to start over and
spend four years of full-time study earning a bachelor’s degree. However,
universities are encountering resistance to counting two-year technical
degrees as the first two years of a bachelor’s degree.
To provide flexibility for all students as well as to cope with relation-
ship problems between two-year and four-year institutions, many uni-
versities have developed individual study programs that allow students
to design personalized degrees with unique titles. In many of these
programs, students can count up to 60 credit hours from their two-
year degree toward an individualized bachelor’s degree. For example,
someone with an associate degree in computer technology could agree
to take additional courses in art and graphics, as well as fill in gaps in
the general education requirement, and create an undergraduate degree
in computer-based graphic design. A maintenance engineer could add
basic business courses and have an undergraduate degree in mainte-
nance management.
The next step is to bring these technical experts into the mainstream
by finding degree programs that are familiar to both students and
potential employers. The most promising of these paths may be through
business because businesses—especially manufacturers, information
systems firms, and design companies—often use technology and hire
technicians with two-year degrees. By having graduates with a two-
year technical degree take the businesses common body of knowledge
(business’s disciplinary core) and fill in their general education require-
ments, colleges of business provide a solid undergraduate experience
and stay within their accreditation guidelines. With this degree in hand,
graduates qualify for admission to a master’s in business administra-
tion (MBA). Once that is completed, they can opt for a PhD, if they
are inclined. There should be other opportunities to develop similar
programs in other fields like engineering and science, which have large
technical components.