Hacker News Reader

Comment by 33W | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps, but unless the slideshow had a typo, it was a BA in Biology...

What do you mean?

Edit: If you're disdainful of the "BA", you should be aware that there isn't any formal distinction between a "BA" and "BS", and every school decides for itself what type of degree to award.

Northwestern University happens to award BA degrees for biology: http://www.biosci.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/

> The undergraduate life sciences major offered in Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences is the Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences with concentration in one of five areas: biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology, neurobiology, physiology, and plant biology.

The slideshow that these are from says (on 6 of 14): "Degree: B.A., biology, Northwestern College. Career goal: Social worker."

Is says a bachelor of arts, but looking into Northwestern's programs more, I think it is a type. I agree that $50K of debt for a BS in Bio would be reasonable.

Now I see your edit. I was disdainful of the BA... I can't think of the specifics, but I thought I had seen programs with both BA and BS options in the past. I didn't know about the lack of distinction between the BA and BS. TIL!

IF a school grantsboth BA and BS STEM degrees, then the former are perhaps worth of disdain, at the very least they wouldn't be designed to get you into a PhD program.

In another direction, I don't believe MIT has any BA degrees, and a quick check showed that if you major in music, you get a Bachelor of Science degree (abbreviated S.B. at least in the '80s). Of course, you don't graduate from MIT in any field without doing a lot of physics and the calculus, plus some other science requirements....

It's pretty arbitrary and dependent on the school. MIT thinks of itself primarily as a science school, so they only award BSes. In contrast, Oxford gives out BAs in everything, even math/physics/computer science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com