Professional Student

The term Professional student has two uses in the university setting:

  • In the United States and Canada, if not elsewhere, a professional student is a student majoring in what are considered the professional degrees. These include Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.), Law (J.D. or LL.B.), Medicine (M.D.) or (D.O.), Engineering, Business Administration (M.B.A.), Nursing (B.Sc.N.), Pharmacy (Pharm.D. or B.Sc.Phm.) and more.
  • "Professional student" is a slang term commonly used in colleges to describe a student who stays in school for many years rather than embarking on a career. To avoid these types, some four-year colleges have imposed limits on the length of time students can be enrolled in order to open up their limited slots to new students. However, the colleges allow for demonstrated exceptions (e.g., a student who holds down a full-time occupation or has a family to raise, who is clearly demonstrating progress toward a degree). See: perpetual student.
  • A less common meaning for "Professional student" is an individual who makes a living writing papers and doing college work in exchange for pay from other people.


Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or student:

    “So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.”
    —G.C. (Georg Christoph)

    “I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.”
    —Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)