Difference Between Certificate and Masters

Certificate vs. Masters

If you ever plan on attaining greater heights in your education ladder, then try to finish a Master’s degree.  Surely this will help you gain a broader knowledge base of some concepts for you to upgrade your theory level.  However, there are some other education programs that only give a certification.  So what are these programs, and how do they differ from the standard Master’s degree?

Foremost, the so-called Master’s degree is an educational degree that can be achieved from an accredited university or college, right after the completion of the Bachelor’s degree.  Depending on the specific course you plan to take, and also depending on the level of training needed, a Master’s degree will usually span from one to three years to be completed.  However, there are rare instances where this degree can be obtained in the undergraduate level, which is true for some schools in the U.K.  In a few occasions nonetheless, some institutions allow students to enrol in joint Bachelor-Master’s degree programs, and these will require, at most, 5 years to complete.  This is a shorter route to obtaining a Master’s degree, rather than the usual 4-year Bachelor’s followed by the 1 to 3 years of Master’s.

Many people want to obtain this degree because it is sometimes required in fulltime jobs, like being an instructor for specific healthcare related professions, like nursing.  Other Master’s degree holders are also satisfied because they benefit from a relatively higher pay as opposed to those under the same line of profession who just ended up with a Bachelors.

Yet, others strive for educational success by completing the graduate certificate program only.  These kinds of curriculum teach the learners about some expertise, but first the latter must have passed his four-year undergraduate course or degree.  A good example is when someone wants to learn about teaching so he can enrol in a graduate certificate program, and obtain his very own teaching certificate.  Most of these will only take a year to complete, and some can even be much faster, like for a single semester only.

Sometimes other students take the graduate certificate program as a means to assess what they will take in their graduate or postgraduate degrees.  In this instance, they will just enroll in 3 to 4 classes worth of credits for graduate certificate programs rather than taking the full blow of the Master’s course.  In these classes they will tackle specific subjects that are also discussed in the Master’s degree.  Hence, this will give the learners a sort of focus; for example, in specific subject matters under Public Health rather than completing the entire Master’s degree for Public Health.  They will complete this for just a year, or sometimes only for a single semester.

1.    A Master’s degree often takes longer to complete than a graduate certificate program.

2.    A Master’s degree requires a Master’s thesis, while the graduate certificate program doesn’t.

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