DIFFERENCES IN COURSE REQUIREMENTS BETWEEN BS AND BA DEGREES IN GEOLOGY WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

When earning their undergraduate degrees, students in science disciplines are often left with a choice between a Bachelor of the Arts or a Bachelor of Science degree. The implications for choosing between these degree types are often unclear to students and despite there being no formalized difference between BA and BS degrees, there has long been a perceived one. In many cases, science students with Bachelor of the Arts degrees have a more difficult time gaining admission into graduate programs or face unnecessary hurdles when seeking certifications post-graduation. In the field of geology, where there is no broadly recognized accreditation system, differences between degree types are perhaps more vague than other science disciplines. The question of how geology students are trained remains ever-relevant as the job market for recent graduates grows and the need for specific background knowledge is emphasized both by employers and by the geoscience education research community.

For this study, geology BA degrees from 67 different programs were examined and compared to the BS degrees analyzed by Klyce and Ryker, 2022. In addition to an analysis of the most commonly required geology courses, cognate courses such as chemistry, biology, physics and math were reviewed. Preliminary findings indicate cognate courses are required at a higher frequency in BS degrees than BA degrees, whereas students enrolled in BA degrees have greater flexibility in choosing which cognate classes to take. This increased flexibility was also true in geology specific courses, where BA students typically had more choices in which courses they completed to earn their degrees. Five of the seven most commonly required courses for a BS in geology (structure, sedimentology/stratigraphy, general field methods courses, mineralogy and petrology) showed marked declines in how often they were required in BA degrees. Understanding the differences in these degree requirements have implications for degree-seeking students, departments offering one or both degree types and geoscience employers.