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)
“It is clear that everybody interested in science must be interested in world 3 objects. A physical scientist, to start with, may be interested mainly in world 1 objects—say crystals and X-rays. But very soon he must realize how much depends on our interpretation of the facts, that is, on our theories, and so on world 3 objects. Similarly, a historian of science, or a philosopher interested in science must be largely a student of world 3 objects.”
—Karl Popper (1902–1994)