<p>What would be the reason for a university to call its bachelor's degrees "of Arts" versus "of Science"?</p>
<p>It does not always correspond to the major that the student studied. For example, students graduating from UC Berkeley as math or physics majors get Bachelor of Arts degrees, while students graduating from MIT as history majors get Bachelor of Science degrees.</p>
<p>usually within the same school, the Bachelor of Science degree requires to take more classes in the major.</p>
<p>There is no rhyme or reason to it. Every university has its own different policies.</p>
<p>For example, at my undergrad institution, you had to take two years of a foreign language for a BA or complete a minor for a BS.</p>
<p>It’s a university decision. I have a bachelor of science and a masters of arts…BOTH in the same field, but at different universities. I know folks with a BA and an MS…same field, different university.</p>
<p>I might be wrong, but I think that the BS denotes a more preprofessional program. I tried googling this, and everything I got pointed to it as a degree in the sciences, but that doesn’t seem right, because schools do offer a BS in other fields, such as performing arts, and as noted above, history. </p>
<p>A BFA is a professional training program within the context of a general education program, and I believe it carries certain requirements for course credits in that field, no matter the college / university.</p>
<p>Many universities actually offer BOTH degrees in the same department but with a slightly different focus.</p>
<p>For example, a BA in biology tends to be more flexible and is aimed at those who don’t plan on attending either med school or grad school in the sciences (so, pre-college teachers, those who plan on entering law, etc.). A BS in biology tends to require more chem, physics and math than the BA does and it is aimed at those who intend to continue biology as an advanced degree.</p>
<p>Son’s school has both a BA and a BS in economics. The BS requires more math courses.</p>
<p>Daughter’s school offers both a BA and BS in biology. The BA requires a foreign language, the BA doesn’t. The BS requires physics and an extra semester of organic chemistry, the BA doesn’t.</p>
<p>I have a BS in a field that has absolutely nothing to do with math or science. The difference was in the gen ed core. BA required foreign language and more religion. BS an extra lab science and courses in computer science. I beleive what a college determines to be “gen ed” is entirely up to the college itself.</p>
<p>My S’s school had two undergraduate colleges, a liberal arts one and an engineering one. In the former, all degrees are BA, including all sciences, math, econ, etc. In the latter, all degrees are BS.</p>
<p>You can’t generalize on this. Each college or university (or sometimes, an entire state university system) sets its own policies on the requirements for each degree. At my alma mater, the University of Michigan, the requirement for the B.A. (which Michigan calls the “A.B.”) and the B.S. are identical except that the B.S. requires at least 60 units of credit (out of 120 total) in math, the physical sciences, and/or the natural sciences. In many majors it’s possible to graduate with either degree, depending on how much math and science you’ve taken; but in some science majors, the math/science requirements are such that everyone graduates with a B.S., while English majors, for example, are generally expected to graduate with the A.B.—though as I read the requirements it’s probably even possible for an English major to end up with enough math/science credits to get a B.S.</p>
<p>For the most part it comes down to how much math/sci is required. Everyone at my alma mater gets a B.S., even English and History majors, due to the number of semester hours of Math/Sci that are part of the core curriculum.</p>
<p>My daughter gets a BS because she opted out of taking a language which means she can’t get a BA. All other requirements are the same in her major, only the one year of language makes it a BA vs a BS. I think it’s totally insignificant whether there is an “A” or “S” on your diploma.</p>
<p>The way I understand it is, in general, a BS has many more required courses and very few elective options.
There are Bachelor of Science Degrees in Design (at some schools; others award BFA) and in Nursing, Accounting, etc. </p>
<p>At schools that offer an option between BA and BS in a given degree, usually there will be a broader liberal arts curriculum in the BA option and more career/subject-specific courses required for the BS.</p>
<p>I don’t recall having an option & believe all sociology degrees from the U I attended were BAs. I was glad I didn’t have to take ANY science (other than CS) in college. I did take stats & one semester of calculus as well as one term of statistics. I also took foreign language.</p>
<p>I don’t recall what S’s degree was in, all I know is that he got a bachelor’s in EE. Not sure what D’s degree will be in, but we sure hope she gets one next spring!</p>
<p>My old college generally awarded BS degrees for scientific majors and BA degrees for nonscientific ones, but there may have been some execptions I wasn’t aware of. I believe that Harvard awards the BA (actually the AB) for everybody except Engineering. majors, who get the BS.</p>
<p>Yep. I went to MIT (originally as a math major) but wound up majoring in Humanities (which was as specific as the liberal arts majors got, my “concentration” was literature.)</p>
<p>So I have a Bachelor of Science in Humanities.</p>
<p>But I’ve taken more math courses than someone with a BA in math from a LAC may have taken!</p>
<p>I hope those in the position to make hiring decisions don’t decide that all BA degree holders in the sciences chose the “less math and physics” route.
Some LACs award only Bachelor of Arts degrees, no matter what the major (including math and physics)</p>
<p>My son, on the other hand, has a Bachelor of Science in a field that falls into the social studies area.</p>
<p>I think every school is different in how it determines its degrees.</p>
<p>A college student from Afghanistan lived with us for year while he attended our local university. He speaks five languages fluently. His degree will be a bachelor of science in government and politics. In order to have a bachelor of arts, he had to have a “competency” in a foreign language–or at least classwork that show competency–but only in one of the languages they offer!</p>
<p>UW-Madison has different requirements for the BA and BS degrees in the college of Letters and Sciences. They changed them recently but while both require the same number of credits the foreign language and science credits required differ. Eons ago I elected to get the BA with my Chemistry major as I did not like the BS yellow tassel and had met the reqs for both.</p>