What is professional degree?

A professional degree has become indispensable these days in order to land a good job at reputed companies. A professional degree gives you an extra edge for others as you choose to separate yourself from the crowd by studying and specializing in niche skills that will later on prove useful to you when you are looking for a job.  A professional degree is usually preceded by an AB degree, which is the normal undergraduate/graduation degree awarded by universities in the United States. In an AB degree, you can specialize in almost any subject of your choice, from biology to English literature to anthropology. With an AB degree, you gain your first foothold in the world of education and you may then choose to specialize by pursuing a professional degree that will give you the desired edge over others competing for the same job.

It has been the trend that people pursuing AB degrees in the field of arts/humanities go on to pursue professional degrees such as law, for instance. For students who pursue AB degrees in arts, such as English and History, pursuing a professional degree in law is a good choice and a popular option. This is because students who have an AB degree in English or history learn early on the art of writing, analysing and interpretation which proves extremely helpful when they study law as law requires an excellent grasp of the English language as well as the art of interpreting complicated statutes.  Meanwhile, studying biology or biochemistry and getting an AB degree in those subjects becomes useful if one opts for a professional degree in medicine as they will already be acclimatised with the various technical concepts used in the field. 

A very useful tool that has been developed by American and European universities is the concept of degree navigator. A degree navigator is simply a tool that helps you keep track of the courses you have completed, and the courses that you will need to take in the future in order to meet degree requirements and graduate successfully. A degree navigator is a novel concept that is based online and is designed to help students and their counsellors evaluate the progress that the student has made towards completion of their degree. Students can choose to use the software to track the progress of their degree. Using the degree navigator does not mean that the relevant faculty or department doesn’t evaluate the progress of your courses; it is simply a helpful tool for the student to keep track of their educational progress. The degree navigator lets the student know their current GPA and the program requirements they have completed so far. The degree navigator also informs the student how many courses are remaining to be completed. The degree navigator also gives you information on the number of completed credits and the number of credits remaining that need to be obtained by the student. 

Thus, a professional degree is preceded generally by an AB degree and while pursuing these degrees, the degree navigator comes in very helpful to the student to chart the progress of their programme.