"Years in School" and "School Years" Not the Same Thing

You Started College at Age Seven?
A medical doctor told me that he had been "in school" for 19 years. I could hardly believe my ears since he looked like he'd barely started shaving, so I asked, "How old are you anyway?"
"I'm 26," he said.

"Well, doc, I'm no math whiz but that would have made you a mere seven years old when you entered college."

"Oh, no, I mean all together," he said.

"All together?" I queried.

"Yes, public school and college and med school."

"Oh, you mean public school . . . so you graduated from high school, and then spent another seven years in college and medical school . . . so, you had seven years of higher, or what's called post-secondary education."

"Yes, and now I'm doing a two-year internship."

Only once before had I heard anyone add their first twelve years of public school into their "Years in School." And, coincidentally, it was another physician.

Generally, at least in my peer group, when someone talks about how many years they were "in school," they mean college/university (post-secondary).

I wonder now about the guy who recently asked me how long I had been in college. I told him, "About fifteen years." I wonder if he thinks I meant regular public school and then three years of college. (Actually, when I take out my calculator and figure it out by sheer credits, I completed 17.5 School Years . . . which took me about 23 Years in School to complete--no, this does not include the first 12 years of public school).

I Was in School Seven Years for My Ph.D.
Next, there is a popular misunderstanding about "years in school" and "school years." I remember hearing a man bragging to a group of people that he had spent seven years beyond his M.A. to earn his Ph.D. Well, curiosity got the better of me, and so I asked him how many credits his Ph.D. had been. As I recall it was around 45 semester credits. Ok my dear readers, here is your basic class in Curriculum 101:

CR-101 Introduction to Curriculum Design
Under the Semester System, one "school year" (aka "academic year") is 32 semester credits.
There are two semesters each "school year" and each semester is generally 16 weeks long (with a small summer session).

Each semester, full-time students complete between 12 and 18 credits (some go-getters may complete as many as 20 or more).

If a student goes very slow throughout his semester-system program and completes only 12 credits for each semester, and even if he does not take advantage of the "summer session" (in which students often pick up another 2 to 6 credits), he will complete 45 credits in 3.75 years. Now, remember, this is actually rather slow for a full-time student. So, for a person to take seven years to complete a 45-semester-credit Ph.D., he'd have to be moving at a snail's pace. Instead of completing 12 credits per semester (which is not very much at all), he'd complete only 3.25 credits per semester . . . that would be about two classes per year.

The Point
I am far more impressed with the person who completes a 45-semester-credit Ph.D. in two years than I am with a person who completed it in seven years. Now, let's get back to the conversation I overheard . . . The man who boasted that he spent seven years on his Ph.D. made that comment in this context:

Mary: "So, Frank, did you hear that Tommy, your favorite former high school student , just completed his Ph.D.?"
Frank: "Yes. I was delighted by the news. He was a great student while he was here; I knew he'd do well with his college work."
Peter: "Oh, you mean Tommy Tipps?"
Mary: "Yes! Tommy-boy. He went on to do us proud."
Peter: "Let's see; he completed his M.A. at what school?"
Frank: "The U-Dub" [University of Washington].
Peter: "Well, where did he go for his Ph.D.?"
Frank: "U of Hawaii at Honolulu--gee, that must 'ave been nice."
Most of the people in the group : "Yeah, nice . . . oh, wow . . . sun and fun."
Peter: "How long did it take him to complete it?"
Frank: "He did it in just over two years."
Sam :"Two years? Must be nice to have such an easy doctoral program. I spent seven years earning my Ph.D."
Most of the people in the group : "Wow . . . seven years. That must have been a huge program."
Ric :"Bill, how many credits was your Ph.D.?"
Sam :"Forty-five semester credits."

Though I didn't say it out loud, I quickly assessed Sam's 45-semester-credit Ph.D. and realized that this guy moved at the speed of a sloth.

Give me Tommy-boy over Sam-the-Sloth any day. Give me the person who dives in and completes his program in record time. By the way, 45 semester credits is less than two school years. Remember, each school year is 32 credits. Thus, 45 credits is just under a year and a half . . . so, Sam-the-sloth "crammed" his one-and-a-half-year Ph.D. degree into seven years. He must have majored in siestas.

If I am hiring for a job and Sam and Tommy come before me in an interview . . . and all other things being equal . . . I guess you know who I'll pick for the job.

CLARIFICATION: I am not talking about the person who takes time out between studies to live life. Many people study full time for a few years, withdraw from school and change jobs, move to new locations, raise families, and then pick up once again years later for their degrees. I am talking about the person who takes a few classes consistently and just plods along because he or she are afraid of the workload.

He Crammed his Four Years of High School into Six Years
Another easy way to understand the difference between "years in school" and "school years" is that old joke about someone "cramming his four years of high school into six years." The kid graduates high school with a full-beard at age 21. The other high school graduates are 18 years old.

An Eight-Month Doctorate?
The reverse is cause for alarm as well, however. The quickest I have ever heard of anyone earning a doctoral degree was a Doctor of Ministry degree in a mere eight months. Now, that's flying, but it is likely that is simply too fast. Can one really get the full-orbed benefits of a doctoral program in only eight months? If I mentioned his name, many of you would know who he is (popular author and teacher and college president), and I know that every one of you would know the seminary he graduated from. (But, since I've never confirmed the "8-month D.Min. story," he will remain anonymous for now.)

A Dime a Dozen?
In 1986 I was working for Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, and one of the professors came into my office to retrieve some student records. She informed me that she taught business classes for the college.

"Oh," says I, "then you must have an M.B.A.?"

She confirmed that she did.

I was finishing my first master's degree at the time, and I knew the work that went into such a program, so I said, "You must be very proud to have earned that degree."

She said, "Not really; master's degrees are a dime a dozen."

I was stunned, not to mention disappointed. I had worked full-time (didn't get a scholarship or discount), attended five different colleges and studied for five years to complete my B.A. After that, I had pastored (done my Internship as a senior pastor) for three more years, and now was doing my master's degree . . . and this professor was telling me that master's degrees were a dime a dozen. Talk about letting the air out of a guy's balloon.

Is It True?
Hoping she was wrong, I began to search the various books in the school's office for information. Since I worked in the Registrar's Office, I figured that something on the shelf would address this issue. To my dismay I found the documentation that leaned toward the professor's comments. What I read said that in 1985, Bachelor's degrees were as common in America as high school diplomas were in 1970. I don't know what the actual stats are today, but I am genuinely amazed at the number of kids coming out of our colleges. Hundreds of thousands graduate each year.

Not only are the sheer numbers of graduates stunning, but so is the overall lack of education that they are receiving. As you can well imagine, I communicate with college graduates on a regular basis, and I am constantly stunned by their inability to even write and communicate coherently.

I know a professional job interviewer. I never ceased to be amazed by his stories about young people with bachelor's degrees from major state universities who cannot properly fill out a simple application form. Many of them cannot spell the most basic words, and their grammar and punctuation are atrocious. He has told me more than once that he is simply astounded that these kids actually have four-year degrees.

To be fair, let me add that there are also college graduates who are articulate and literate, and who bring honor to their alma maters.

I Am More Impressed
Nonetheless, I am far more impressed by the man or woman in his or her 30's or 40's (or 50's or 60's) who tells me that he/she just completed a bachelor's degree than by a 22-year old kid who tells me he just completed his bachelor's degree. Why? Those older people went back to school to actually learn . And, they already had a lot of life-learning under their belts before they went to college. Kids right out of high school often see (and experience) college as just one four-year-long party that includes some reading and writing . . . but, even that may be minimized if they learn to "work the system." Too often parents simply pay tuition, and the kids have no idea of the fantastic gift and opportunity that they have before them. I have known people who worked several odd jobs and put themselves through college; often these people were not only hard workers, but they were also the best students.

Most CES students are 30 years old and older. And, as far as I know, none of them is having tuition paid by their parents. If I remember correctly, our oldest graduate was a man of 73 who earned his Doctor of Ministry with our school. Next in line was a delightful woman who had earned her bachelor's degree some 40 years prior to enrolling with CES. She wanted to earn a doctoral degree. So, she enrolled with CES at age 64 for a master's degree on her way to her doctoral degree. She graduated with her doctoral degree from CES at 70. The youngest person to enroll and stick with it began his studies with us at age 19. He was 23-years-old when he earned his Bachelor's degree with CES. No other teenager has begun and completed a degree program with CES, yet. And, our most recent graduate just finished his doctoral degree with us and he is 35 (he started college with CES as an undergraduate student ten years ago).

The Three Levels of Degrees
--The Bachelor's degree is configured so that the graduate has a batch of knowledge (i.e., liberal arts and sciences) . . . he is not an expert or skilled in anything, but he has been exposed to many things . . . however, only superficially, at a cursory and uncritical level. (Note: This would not necessarily be true for bachelor degrees from schools like CES since CES allows its undergraduate students to major throughout their bachelor's degrees on specific topics. So, whereas their traditional-college counterparts--even most Bible college students--may have studied a multiplicity of topics during college, CES graduates have far more knowledge in limited and specific knowledge areas. For instance, a person with a Bachelor's degree from CES in Bible may have as much or more knowledge of the field as someone with an M.A. degree in the same field from a traditional college.)

This batch of knowledge sometimes turns out to be a sort of mirage. What I mean is that many people who graduate with a B.A. from a traditional, on-campus college or university often reach the end of their four-years, have their degrees in hand, and feel like frauds. I have counseled recent college graduates who say to me, "I didn't learn anything!" One man was so distraught at the end of his four years that he seriously considered not completing his last class because he felt like a fake. He told me that he felt like he was supposed to "know something," that he "should be an expert" but in reality, he felt like he really didn't zero-in on anything and learn it well.

He had done well in college, earning all A's and B's . . . but, in his own words, he didn't feel like he learned anything that he could take out into the real world. I smiled and said, "Welcome to the world of most college graduates." I then told him that what he was feeling was not uncommon. Most students (more than 90% from what I can gather) do not feel like experts in their major fields of study upon the completion of their undergraduate degrees. And, rightly so. The bachelor's degree was not created (at least not in the American educational system) to make people experts. It is simply four years of generalized (I'd say over-generalized) education . . . that, in my humble estimation, is failing even there. I have known many college graduates who didn't get very much at all out of their college studies.

Survey Says . . .
In an on-line questionnaire about the effectiveness of their college degrees, more than 15,000 people responded. The outcome was staggering.

QUESTION: How well do you think your college education prepared you for the work world ?
61% (9342 votes for) Everything I needed to know I didn't learn in college.
27% ( 4100 votes for) Pretty well.
10% (1627 votes for) Very well.

Total: 15,069 votes (Source: Monster.com - 9-22-99)

Many of those respondents explained their voting. Here is just one quote from one college grad. Michelle states:

I don't know what to say about my 4 years at college. That's because I barely remember 10% of it! What I do remember is the 25,000$ I now have in accumulated student loans. Did it help me get a better job? Lets just say I'm one of the most educated pizza delivery girls you'll ever encounter. Don't get me wrong, It feels good to say I have a degree. But, up to this point it's been over rated and pretty much useless!

Lest You Think I am Being Too Critical
A college professor named Anders Henriksson has collected various egregious mistakes written by his students. He first published some of these mistakes in an article in titled "College Kids Say the Darndest Things." But, he collected so many that he has now put them in a book, Non Campus Mentis .

In an article ("Student Book Offers a Twisted History 'Coarse'") about the book, Sarah Tippit rehearses some of the student errors.

History, after all, is nothing more than ``the behind of the present,'' according to one student, who aptly added: ``This gives incites from the anals of the past.''

The once-mighty British Empire is in a ``state of recline. Its colonies have slowly dribbled away leaving only the odd speck on the map.''

Chairman ``Moo'' has passed away, as has former President ``Franklin Eleanor Roosavelt,'' and civil rights leader ``Martin Luther Junior'' was slain in the 1960s, shortly after making his famous ``If I Had A Hammer'' speech.

Hitler, a depressed ``Nazi leader of a Communist Germany'' who spurred a huge ``anti-semantic'' movement through a terrifying ``Gespacho,'' launched ``Operation Barbarella'' while the English ``vanely hoped for peas.''

The war began turning around, though, when the ``Allies landed near Italy's toe and gradually advanced up her leg.

Hitler ultimately ``shot himself in the bonker.'' (See full article )

--The Master's degree is configured so that the graduate has mastered --through critical analysis and practical application--a specific topic, and he is now a skilled and competent worker in this area. However, depending on the topic, the actual research involved, and the professors, some master's graduates feel sorely inadequate as well. Not everyone with a master's degree is a skilled and competent worker in their field of study. In fact, I'd say most are not. It takes the master's degree and a few years of actual work in the field before many feel adequately competent.

--The Doctoral degree is configured so that the graduate is an expert in a specific area of knowledge. He is more than a skilled and competent worker; he is an authority on the topic, and he is able to " cut into and dissect the data " for further research and educational benefit.

However, as strange as it may seem to undergraduates and others who do not have a doctoral degree, simply earning a doctoral degree does not automatically guarantee that a person is an expert nor that he will feel competent in his field. Like the undergraduate students who feel that they are not ready to say that they have earned a four-year degree, so too many new doctors have a difficult time thinking of themselves as doctors or allowing people to address them as such. Two recent cases come to mind: two men that I know have recently earned doctoral degrees: one a D.Min. and one a D.T.S. Both men find it difficult to be called "doctor." One of the men told me that whenever he hears someone call him doctor, he feels like he should duck to avoid a bolt of lightning from the sky. However, I appreciate those for whom the title "Dr." is not a "quick and easy fit." I find it disturbing when people earn a degree (at any level) and act as though they have "arrived." Some people "flash" the title "Doctor" like a badge. I have heard of some men that actually have made their wives call them "doctor." One man called me at my office and complained that not enough people would call him doctor. I asked him where he had earned his doctoral degree from. Goodness, the school is so sub-standard that I too refused to call him doctor. Yet, even with this ridiculously substandard degree that he had, he was adamant that everyone should call him "doctor."

It took me years to feel comfortable with the title "Dr." And, even now when I consider some of my academic colleagues and their abundant skill and expertise, I feel uneasy wearing the same title that they go by. Yet, on the flip side, I have met people with doctoral degrees who are so unskilled and so lacking in the field that they hold their degrees in that I wonder how they ever graduated.

Personal Opinion
I see the bachelor's degree as most academics do . . . it is a foundation on which to build; it is not the building itself. Most people--in any occupation or ministry--will learn far more by actually doing the job or ministry than they will by earning a bachelor's degree in the field through a traditional college with all of the tacked-on "liberal arts and sciences" that are required.

I remember, as most do who went to a traditional school, sweating over the periodic table in a required science class. I remember cramming various numeric equations in my head so that I could pass that final exam in math class. I remember the utter frustration of my fingers not manipulating the piano keyboard properly in my "art appreciation class." I remember studying human anatomy for a required health class. I remember that I about died when we had to do that mandatory eight-mile run so that we could pass that "all-important" gym class. I remember that Introduction to Psychology class in which I was told that Bible-believers were atavistic and that if we truly wanted to understand the human condition, we must spend our lives reading and studying Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Ah, yes, and let us not forget that literature class in which the best selling book of all time (the Bible, in case you didn't know) was conspicuously absent from the reading list. By the time I walked away with my accredited B.A. degree . . . I certainly had a batch of knowledge. But, I learned far more about my topic (Bible and ministry) over the next four years of actually being in the ministry than I had learned during my B.A. program. However, one more point must be made, and made clear . . . one may learn by doing, but one could also be learning the wrong way to do it if he is not properly instructed. This leads me to a new topic . . . and I shall address it in my next CT ( CT # 50 ).

CONCLUDING REMARKS

A BATCH OF KNOWLEDGE: Thirty-two semester credits (which is the same as 48 quarter credits) is one academic year of study. A typical Bachelor's degree is 128 semester credits (or 192 quarter credits). A typical Bachelor's degree doesn't make one an expert in any field . . . it just gives the student an "introduction" to various topics, from Art to Zoology . . . and allows the student to take a few extra classes in a "major."

MASTERING THE SUBJECT: There is no such thing as a "typical master's degree" because the amount of credits required can range from as few as 32 semester credits (48 quarter credits) for some M.A.s, to as many as 128 semester credits for the Th.M. Also, while there is a general agreement on the number of credits for a Bachelor's degree (between 120 to 128 semester credits--or 180 to 192 quarter hours), there is no general agreement for the M.A. One school's M.A. might be only 32 semester credits and another school might require 48 semester credits for the same degree. The M.Div. used to be fairly generally agreed upon, but no longer. Depending on what a student's undergraduate studies consisted of, he may have as few as 72 semester credits to complete the M.Div., whereas one school I'm aware of requires 108 semester credits for the same degree.

DOCTORING THE PATIENT: Like the Master's, there is no "typical doctoral degree." I have seen some D.Min. programs require as little as 24 credits and others require 45. Generally, the Ph.D. is considered the highest academic degree one can have and the Th.D. is equivalent to the Ph.D. However, even that is sometimes not agreed upon. With some liberal arts universities, one need only a B.A. (four years of previous study) to be able to enroll into the Ph.D. program, but the traditional Th.D. program typically requires that one have an M.Div. (a total of seven years of previous study) before enrolling. And, the road to a traditional D.Min. (which also requires a prerequisite M.Div.) actually has more school years than an M.D. (doctor of medicine). Yet, the D.Min. is typically considered a lesser degree than a Ph.D. or a Th.D., and an M.D. is seen as the equivalent of a Ph.D. Confused yet?

So, while there is no wide-spread agreement on how many credits graduate degrees require for certain majors, one thing is a fact: "Years in School" and "School Years" are not the same thing. So, don't be impressed by the person who crammed his one-and-a-half-year Ph.D. into s-e-v-e-n years.

And, whenever someone gives you the number of years that they "attended school," you'd better ask them if they are including public school in their totals.