Is someone with an Associate of Arts degree considered a college graduate?
Or does an AA degree just count as "some collge"?
Do you have to have at least a BA or BS degree to be considered a college
graduate?

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 28 Apr 2005 17:41 PDT

Hello sunnyx05-ga,

It would help to understand the context of your question. Are you
responding to job postings that say "must have college degree" or
"some college" as part of the qualification requirements? Do you want
to know how to handle this kind of requirements? Please clarify the
reason you're asking for the distinction between AA and "some college"
so that we can get you the information you need.

~ czh ~

Personally I believe that this is a matter of opinion.  Some people
believe that to be a college graduate you must have a four year degree
from an accredited University and program. Others believe that you
must simply have any degree from any college etc.

An associates degree, like yours in my opinion, does count as a
college degree and therefore you are a college graduate.

However one must measure the strength of ones degree by examining the
level (MS, PhD, BS, BA, Associate, etc) with regard to the institution
and if its an accredited program.

One thing I often think of, when looking at associates degrees, is
that most of the time this level does not have to satisfy as strict
base requirements.

Naturally the strongest degree one may obtain is a PhD from a major
University with an advisor who is one of the experts in the field of
study.

In conclusion if you were to fill out a form which said, "Do you have
a college degree or some college?" Then I might advise you write
college degree.  However if the person who designs such forms is smart
they might wish to write, "Do you have a four year degree in X field
of study from an accredited institution?"

This is at least my humble opinion.

Best,
Steve

Some college.  You need a bachelor's degree to be a graduate.  Sorry.

Yes, an AA is a recognized degree and you are considered a college
graduate (assuming it was obtained from an accredited school). a BA is
just a higher degree as is a MA and a PHD. if the AA serves your
purpose, then it's all good. "some college", in my opinion, refers to
someone who has attended college but did not recieve a degree.

I used to work in the Job Bank of a state employment service. I
encoded job descriptions for data entry into the computer. If an
employer's job specs said something such as "must be a college
graduate," we always assumed that this referred to a four-year degree.
In fact, this was the official policy of the Job Bank: "college
graduate" was coded as "16," meaning 16 years of formal education.

While an AA is certainly a degree of sorts, few employers are thinking
of junior college degrees when they say "college degree."