"Professional studies" is a term used to classify academic programs which are applied or interdisciplinary in focus. The term can also be used for non-academic training for a specific profession.
Professional studies usually combine theory and practice-based professional learning, focusing on a body of knowledge that is more strictly delineated and canonical than non-professional studies. Students are trained to ensure expected standards and adequate service delivery in the best practice of a profession.
Professional studies may lead to academic degrees such as the Bachelor of Professional Studies (BPS), Master of Professional Studies (MPS), or Doctor of Professional Studies (DPS). A BPS is similar to a Bachelor of General Studies with a greater emphasis on practical and technical training (and a corresponding lower emphasis on liberal arts), and therefore of greater interest to mid-career students. MPS degrees are usually course-based with a report or project component rather than a research thesis. The US National Science Foundation considers a DPS to be equivalent to a PhD.
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or studies:
“Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather than achievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.”
—Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)