AA Degree
An Associate of Arts degree, or AA degree, is a two-year course offered at community colleges and other colleges and universities who may also offer bachelor’s degree courses. It equips individuals with knowledge in the fields of social sciences and the humanities, and prepares students for transfer to a bachelor’s degree program in the same fields. While many students utilize an associate degree as a transfer degree, there are others for which the said degree is the terminal degree. These students may either be uninterested in pursuing a bachelor’s degree and staying in school longer than the two years it takes to finish an associate degree, or not have the time or resources to finish a four-year course. Getting an associate degree will equip them with the qualification for selected kinds of employment.
The number of credit hours it takes to get an AA degree depends on the college or university offering it. The course program is usually finished in two years with 40 to 60 credit hours. The subjects required for an AA degree typically are general education subjects as well as liberal arts courses.
There are different fields of concentration an individual who wishes to get an Associate of Arts degree may get into. Some of them are the fields of art, business, communication, economics, education, English and literature, foreign languages, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology and theatre.
The difference in the curricula for the Associate of Arts degree among various colleges and universities offering the program has become a cause for concern among the students and educators. As already mentioned, an AA degree is usually considered a transfer degree and the person who gets into that program intends to transfer to a four-year course after getting the degree. However, because of the disparity in the credit hours, institutions that have another set of transfer requirements may not be willing to admit all the credit hours earned for the associate degree. Unless the associate degree was granted by the same college or university, individuals with the said degree may still be required to repeat certain classes, hence, extending the number of years for him to get his bachelor’s degree. However, this is not a common problem as there are still institutions that credit the whole two years spent in getting an associate degree towards the bachelor’s degree quest.
Aside from the option of doing further studies, people who have earned an Associate of Arts degree have the foundation for work in the fields of the humanities, social sciences, communications and foreign languages, businesses and the government. There are plenty of positions in the workforce for which an associate degree is a sufficient qualification. This gives an associate degree holder a chance to join the workforce and earn an income while still working for his bachelor’s degree. Some degree holders become a teacher’s assistant, a research assistant in the field of the social sciences and the humanities, as well as assistants in the fields of law and medicine, among other jobs.
