Expanded graduate certificate programs are needed at WMU

By Hassan al-Momani
Western Herald

Graduate certificate programs have become a main part of the graduate studies at most American universities. Graduate certificate programs are considered a complementary part for the graduate programs, in which they prepare and qualify the students to specialize in certain areas of research. A lot of students prefer to join the graduate certificate programs as an attempt to delve into certain fields of studies before enrolling in their master’s degree or Ph.D. studies.
Joining the graduate certificate programs will qualify students to get jobs quickly in certain fields. Doctorate studies might last for five years or more for some majors, but the graduate certificate programs may last one year.
Most of the students specialized in the educational programs are in need of these graduate certificates because they need complementary and supportive courses that will qualify them to teach effectively at schools.
Even the graduate students who are previously enrolled in the master’s and Ph.D. programs might be in need of these certificates, which will enable them to be highly qualified to get suitable jobs. For example, doctorate students of English might need a graduate certificate in professional writing, Tesol, teaching of writing, literature for children and young adults, or American studies.
All these certificate programs might be useful for both the graduate students and for the students who are done with their undergraduate studies and who want to be more qualified to get suitable jobs.
The time has come to extend these programs on campus because they will bring a lot of benefit for our university in the future.
These programs might help the university overcome its economic crisis by attracting a lot of students to join them.
Some might claim that these programs will negatively influence the doctorate and master’s programs, because the students might join these graduate certificates instead of the graduate programs.
This is not true because the students who join the doctorate and master’s programs want to work as professors at universities and colleges. The graduate certificate programs do not necessarily qualify students to teach at universities, but they prepare them to proceed in their graduate studies and to get more knowledge in the related fields to their majors.
In other words, these graduate certificate programs are complementary and supportive programs that give the students deep knowledge in certain fields.
For example, there are a lot of courses in the department of communication that qualify the students in journalism, but the department can design a 12 or 15-credit graduate certificate program of journalistic writing that gives the students a deeper and more specialized knowledge in this fruitful field.
Finally, our university has a great potential to open more graduate certificate programs that will attract a lot of students who seek to get specialized knowledge in certain fields. These programs will save a lot of time for students and will not cost our university a lot of money to open them.

– Hassan Al-Momani, a Western Herald opinion columnist, is a graduate student majoring in English and can be reached via e-mail at hassan76us@yahoo.com.

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=16229

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Mar 31 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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