To understand why applied baccalaureate degrees are likely to be more and more prevalent in coming years, consider Billy Garcia, who lives and works in Hidalgo County, Texas. The area, near the Mexican border, is historically one of the state’s most impoverished.
Garcia was working for a local manufacturer several years ago when it dawned on him that his opportunities for advancement were limited. The two-year associate degrees he had earned, in accounting and business management, had served him well, but he suspected that he would soon bump up against a glass ceiling—if he hadn’t done so already.
Around the same time, the local community college, South Texas College, began offering applied baccalaureate degrees, and Garcia jumped at the chance to pursue a Bachelor of Applied Technology (BAT) degree in technology management.
Requirements for the degree were “geared toward the hands-on side” of what Garcia was already doing, such as using cost-accounting tools to manage financial tasks, he says. “It was pretty easy to apply (the training) to what I was dealing with at work on a day-to-day basis.”
In 2006, soon after completing the degree, Garcia landed a position as a research manager for a health clinic specializing in cardiovascular disease. Three months in, he became practice manager, and at six months he was named practice administrator. Within a year, he was promoted to position coordinator.
“My quality of life and where I’m at now, relative to income and responsibilities … I’ve made significant strides,” says Garcia, who left the health clinic to take a job with a local hospital, a move that came with “a significant increase in pay.”
A flexible program
Garcia could be the face of the applied baccalaureate degree. It helped him advance his career while meeting the needs of local employers. And the flexibility of the program allowed Garcia to bolster his skill set while continuing to work and provide for his family.
Advocates of the applied baccalaureate extol the degree as one important answer to a tough question: How do we best train and educate workers for jobs whose requirements are changing against a backdrop of technological advancement, globalization and a mass exodus from the workplace by Baby Boomers?
“It used to be that you’d get an associate degree to do a trade, such as welder, pipefitter, mechanic,” says Johnny Spell, a senior production leader and hiring manager for the Dow Chemical Co. facility in Freeport, Texas. Now those workers are expected to use advanced technology, computers and standard tools that manage the logistics of supply chains and product movement.
Workers need to upgrade their skills, but getting a traditional degree isn’t necessarily a feasible or effective way to do that. “Not everybody in the world should be going after a four-year bachelor’s of science degree,” says Spell. “A two-year associate degree gets you some knowledge, and this (the applied baccalaureate, or AB) takes it a step further and gives you additional training and knowledge to utilize tools in the workforce.”
A good AB program teaches employees to work in teams, lead projects and use the tools required of the job, something that traditional degrees, including the bachelor’s in chemical engineering degree that Spell earned, don’t provide, he says.
Meeting workforce needs
Workers, employers and education institutions are moving toward AB degrees of necessity. The destination is clear, yet the path for getting there is not. Educators have yet to establish clear rules of the road—or even agree on who should be driving.
At times, traditional baccalaureate-granting institutions have looked askance at community colleges that grant ABs, often expressing concern over what they see as mission drift and mission creep. The suggestion is that community colleges are abandoning a core responsibility to infringe on the missions of four-year institutions.
The tension between the two sectors may spring from cultural differences and the way they perceive their roles. The orientation of four-year colleges and universities is wrapped around their role as degree-granting institutions, whereas two-year institutions are more keenly focused on local workforce development and preparing students for transfer to four-year programs.
Much of the criticism is misplaced, says Juan Mejia, vice president of academic affairs at South Texas College, noting that only three community colleges in Texas are offering applied baccalaureates.
“We’re not going to drift from our mission,” insists Mejia, adding that community colleges don’t aspire to be universities. “Community colleges would consider that blasphemous.”
Rather, community colleges are addressing the needs of workers who find that their associate degrees will take them only so far. Even if they wanted to pursue a traditional four-year degree, most of the credits earned as part of a technical associate degree wouldn’t transfer. Essentially, these students would have to start over. In addition, employers are clamoring for a credential that will give workers the skills they need to be competitive in a fast-changing global economy.
“Businesses are saying that they need us to deliver the (applied) baccalaureates,” Mejia says. In addition to the technology management degree earned by Garcia, South Texas offers a BAT in computer and information technologies. “Our students want the degree. Employers say: ‘You are preparing them well.’ Salaries are good.”
South Texas has proposed offering a BAT in the area of child and family development at the behest of early-childhood development organizations such as Head Start. Bolstering the credentials of workers who interact with the impressionable children could also serve to promote a college-going culture, particularly among groups that have lower levels of educational attainment, he says. For now, the state has slowed approval of new AB programs while it reviews the effectiveness of current offerings.
Filling employment gaps
Edison State College, in Florida, offers AB degrees in education that are intended to fill critical teacher shortages in science, math, English and English as a second language (ESL). The college is adding four new applied baccalaureate programs this fall, for a total of 10 that will enroll 700 students. In 2006, the first year Edison offered the degree, 13 students enrolled in the program.
One of the new programs is an AB in cardiopulmonary science. “There is a huge push by the American Association for Respiratory Care to have a baccalaureate degree by 2015,” says Kristen Zimmerman, associate dean of baccalaureate programs at Edison.
Like other institutions, Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology began offering AB degrees in engineering and computing to satisfy the aspirations of students and meet the needs of employers. “Industry was saying: ‘We really like what you’re producing, and we want more at a higher level,’ ” says Scott Newman, chair of the Institute’s Information Technology Division. “There is an unmet need.”
Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus, a traditional four-year institution, is tweaking its AB program to function more like a traditional transfer degree program. To that end, it is articulating its Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) programs to align with Associate of Applied Science programs at community colleges.
“We’re redesigning the whole process,” says Keith Hjelmstad, university vice president and dean of the College of Technology and Innovation. Hjelmstad’s college houses several BAS degrees, including aviation management, manufacturing technology and management, and graphic information technology. “It’s not all the way to the ordinary transfer route, but we’ll build in certain requirements. That will mean that students coming across will meet our general education requirements.”
Clarence Fenner, workforce development coordinator for the South Texas Project, a nuclear power plant, predicts that the value of applied baccalaureate degrees will become apparent when skilled workers of the baby boomer generation begin retiring in large numbers. With 35 percent to 50 percent of the workforce set to depart, there clearly is a need for a nimble and efficient system to train workers.
“I don’t think we’ve measured the true value of it (the AB degree) just yet,” says Fenner. “As we develop a new workforce and bring them on board and transfer that knowledge, we will realize that value.”
John Pulley, a former staff writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education, is a freelance education writer based in Arlington, Va.
http://www.luminafoundation.org/publications/Applied_baccalaureates.pdf
