The Facts:Campbell University and N.C. State recently announced the formation of a dual-degree program giving students the opportunity to earn a Juris Doctor and Master’s in Public Administration in just four years.
Our Opinion:Dual or joint degrees are a positive for the University. It should seek to establish even more of them in other fields and with other universities.
The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is rejoicing at the sound of a newly formalized bond with Campbell University. Now students can enroll in a program working towards a Master’s of Public Administration and a Juries Doctor. By combining these two separate degrees into one program, the merger has cut a year of study and tuition from affected students’ loads.
Not to interrupt the celebration too abruptly, but why do we not have more of these connections with other universities? The Triangle universities have distinct specializations that hardly overlap. When students choose to cross University lines to connect those different specializations, they enter into the inefficient hurdles of satisfying the new universities’ core requirements.
Standardization of these core requirements between our Triangle schools could open new doors to students who have the burden of a limited budget for school tuition fees. If standardization could save an individual just one year of tuition, the savings would multiply across all the students that would find the programs advantageous.
The University must realize the gold mine they have stumbled upon. With some coordination, the people that decide to attend Duke, Wake Forest or — regrettably — UNC-Chapel Hill can too receive the same benefits this program gives to Campbell.
Thankfully, confidence in the University’s ability to coordinate these connections is warranted. N.C. State already has a joint biomedical engineering graduate program with Carolina where credits for engineers can seamlessly transfer to satisfy the requirements both universities have for their students.
With UNC Ashville, NCSU has a wonderful joint program for a bachelor of science in engineering with a mechatronics concentration. It is with this kind of spirit that universities can specialize and accumulate the expensive tools needed for teaching without inefficient overlapping.
An efficient system of specialization between universities, private and otherwise, could spill over to saving in tuition of students that plan on completing only their bachelor degree. The University’s relationship with Campbell is hopefully just the beginning of a much larger web of connections between rivaling Triangle universities.
