Intensive requirements, rather than content, distinguish master’s-level courses from undergraduate courses. The content is specialized, but often no more so than in upper-level undergraduate courses in British Commonwealth or European universities. First-year American graduate students are, in a sense, catching up. Yet they are also learning to work under more pressure than undergraduates in the United States of elsewhere.
It is not quite accurate to equate first-year graduate study with the master’s degree; in addition, most master’s programs require more than a year’s work, and more than course work. They can be equated in their purpose: to acquaint the student with the literature, the current ideas, the methodologies, etc., of his or her field. The first-year of graduate study is best characterized, then, as a reading program.
All in all, the master’s program is less easily defined than undergraduate curricula. The number of residence credits may be effectively determined by an accrediting agency (评审机构) and will vary from field to field. In some curricula (e.g. clinical psychology), a mandatory internship or practical training leads to 2 to 3 years of study, whereas an M.B.A may be completed in 18 months. The final requirement in a master’s program may be a thesis, a comprehensive exam, or both, or course papers collected and bound as a thesis-substitute. There may or may not be a foreign language requirement.
The master’s degree itself may be defined as a certificate of competence in a reasonably specialized field. We may note here that many American educators oppose narrow specialization at master’s and even at doctoral level; they complain of highly trained engineers who know nothing of the social sciences, of physicians who don’t understand human psychology, and of literature Ph.D.’s who ignorant of science. Effective graduate education, in this view, is the process of learning to find data, to evaluate it, and to organize it meaningfully.
1. First-year American graduate students ______.
2. It is suggested that ______.
3. In order to get M.B.A, you must ______.
4. Which one of the following final requirements is necessary in master’s program?
5. Which of the following statements is NOT mentioned?