RA master's degree no bachelor degree required - Future Generations University

I saw this post on the sister forum and found it interesting. You can earn a RA master's degree without a bachelor's degree?

https://www.future.edu/alternate-track/
"Offers alternative admission track to $16k RA masters in Community Development. The cool part is you can use the alternative admissions even without a bachelor degree. So while it may not be the least expensive RA masters out there, it could save the time and expense of getting a BA first."

 

With the caveat that a Masters degree in Community Development is likely to put you in a niche sort of hiring environment where formal education may be less of an issue, I don't know that I would encourage anyone to think they can get along fine in the US with a masters without a bachelors. I recall when my brother applied for a corrections position in New York. He was denied. My brother had no high school diploma (long story). He did, however, have an associate's degree (now bachelor's degree). One would think that proof of an associates would satisfy the requirement. Nope. He couldn't give them a copy of his HSD and so application denied.

He fixed it since because NYS allows you to get a GED if you have some credits leading toward a degree. It was easily remedied. But it still shows how rigid some employers, especially government, can be on educational requirements.

B.S. required and Masters preferred may mean literally that to a lot of people.

I'd like to see this become the norm again for professional degrees, though.

 

Indeed. Beyond the rarity of someone having a Master's without a Bachelor's (which can invite uncomfortable conversations when people assume you have one), a Bachelor's degree covers much more material than many Master's degrees. I know some people may argue that a Master's should cover the same material as an equivalent Bachelor's given the intensity, but I don't know if that is really true.

For comparison, Eastern's MS in Data Science requires:

• 520 Intro to DS
• 550 Intro to Stats
• 575 Intermediate Python
• 650 Applied Stats with R
• 660 Database Management/SQL
• 600 Data Visualization
• 670 Intro to Machine Learning
• 680 Applied Machine Learning
• 690 Data Science Ethics
• 691 Capstone.

The BS in Data Science at the same school includes:

• Calculus I
• Statistics for Data Analysis (equivalent to 650)
• Intro to CS (equivalent to 520)
• Intro to Programming with C++
• Data Structures
• Artificial Intelligence
• Intro to Data Science (equivalent to 575)
• Statistics in R (equivalent to 650)
• Data Management (equivalent to 660)
• Applied Data Science (equivalent to 670?)
• Data Science Ethics (equivalent to 690)
• 9 credits of electives

Just among the required courses we see 21 credits not present in the Master's. That's almost another entire Master's degree!

@Neuhaus , Since you took both a BSBA and an MSOL/MBA, how would you contrast the depth/breadth?

 

I'd say it's not true. Your Masters degree covering what is in the bachelors program is, I would say, an incidental result of having a bachelors degree as a requirement for a masters program! The key difference is that a bachelors is typically done the liberal arts way with a standardized structure in which there is room for a major. The masters is just that major and no fluff. Still, I did more than 36 credits in my undergrad.

So, to clarify, my degrees are a BSBA and a BSOL . And an MSM and an MBA.

My undergraduate work is a cluster. And one of the main reasons I maintain that I am done with degrees is that the cost to ship my transcripts to a school is absurd at this stage.

The breadth of both of my bachelors were much more broadly focused across the business spectrum. My BSBA, in particular, was in Management and not HR. So I had coursework in HR, Operations, Managerial Accounting, Financial Accounting, Economics etc. My MSM, which was focused in Project Management, dove deeper into those specific areas. I again studied a smattering of areas like HR and Finance and such, but all of it was focused in on project management. So, HR issues for a project manager. Project Finance, things like that. It narrowed and dug deeper.

My MBA was interesting because, prior to this, my only real academic HR credential was my certificate from Cornell which was focused extensively on HR topics. Nothing else. My MBA did not actually go as deep as I would have assumed. I took some courses (five or so, I think?) in specifically HR. However, they were somewhat cursory compared to my Cornell certificate and certainly compared to my SPHR and CEBS certifications. As an example, I took a course for my MBA in employee benefits and it was...kind of a throwaway. It basically went over that benefits exist, how benefits programs are structured, how benefits motivate employees, how benefits tie into an organization's mission etc. But CEBS, a certification I earned before I even had a bachelors, was a deep dive face punch of benefits administration. I believe I may have missed the era when CEBS was ACE recommended but it is clear to see why it was. Those were some in depth courses on benefits and compensation.

Had my only benefits course been part of an MS in HR program I would have been very, very disappointed. That said, an MBA is supposed to have a bit more breadth than more specialized masters. It's supposed to enable me to be able to view all of these things from an executive level while CEBS is for a practitioner level employee.

And my BSOL stemmed from my having a healthy smattering of courses in organizational dev, psychology and leadership because of a prior employer's proximity and willingness to pay for random non-degree coursework at a local college. Couple that with I was panicking that my degrees from for-profit schools would become worthless because a prior government administration was making for-profits seem like the worst thing imaginable and were doing much to demonize all such schools.