Professional degree
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Template:Limitedgeographicscope A professional (also known as first-professional) degree is a post-baccalaureate degree, either at the Master's or Doctoral level, which is designed to prepare the holder for a particular career, or profession. These are fields where most holders of the degree are not engaged primarily in scholarly research and academic activities, but, rather in a profession, e.g., law, medicine, religious ministry, education or engineering.
Sweden
A professional degree is an academic degree that is regulated under common laws of the Swedish government and examined and awarded by prescribed schools and universities, and intended for those wishing to follow a given profession. The degree gives the undergraduate student a licence, chartered or special competence, which is often required - or sometimes legally needed - to practice as a medical doctor, nurse, teacher, engineer and accounting etc.
Under certain conditions, such as being involved in a terrible accident that reduces you abilities, criminal acts or making too many mistakes in the given profession, there is a risk of losing one's licence for the particular profession, and thereby having no legal rights to practice the given profession anymore.
The professional degree is often similar to Bachelor of Science or Master of Science, depending on the title of the profession and on the years of education which varies between 90-330 ECTS. In Sweden, all education is treated as undergraduate degrees up to the license or doctorate level, which are treated as postgraduate degrees. The 'undergraduate' studies is in the range 4-5.5 years, whilst the graduate studies varies between 2.5-5 years, corresponding to license and doctoral degrees, respectively. This education schemes also applies to the international degrees such as Bachelor's and Master's degrees, i.e. they corresponds to an 'undergraduate' degree, too.
For those with a professional degree, further studies give a special graduate title, such as Licentiate of Philosophy, Licentiate of Science (a degree corresponding to a half completed PhD, i.e. 2 & 1/2 years) or Doctor of Juris, Doctor of Science, etc.. However, in the English, some of these are translated to Doctor of Philosophy.
In Sweden, there are also international degrees such as Bachelor of Science or Master of Science, and especially the engineering education program has its goal to transform into those 'international standard degrees' during the next one or two decades (see the article Bologna process), not only in Sweden but in the whole of Europe.
United States
In the United States, professional degrees refer to graduate degrees that are specific to a particular vocation, or profession. Law school (JD), medical school (MD), dental school (DDS), veterinary school (DVM), business school (MBA), the masters of fine arts (MFA), seminary and architecture school (MArch) are all examples of institutions where professional degrees can be earned.