post-secondary education

[shilpa kulkarni]

I was wondering what is considered as "post-secondary education" in the U.S. I know high school is till the 12th Grade...

[Jason Menard]

Post-secondary education is graduate school. Primary education is K-12, secondary education I guess would be the Bachelors or Associates level.

[shilpa kulkarni]

Thanks Jason!

[frank davis]

Is a Masters in MIS of much value for an IT person not sure of whether he wants to leave coding and do more managerial type decision making?

[Jason Menard]

I think the vast majority of people who consider themselves "IT" people aren't coders anyway. I would also think that most "IT" degrees being churned out these days are of the information systems variety (MIS, CIS, IFSM, etc...) and not Comp Sci. Where I go IFSM is the largest department in the school. It is considered a fairly easy major, much more so than CS (I was told by one of the Professor's in Math and Statistics deparment that IFSM means "I Failed Science and Math" ). These are the people that a Masters in MIS degree was probably designed for, although I'm sure there are cS types for whom a Masters in MIS would be more beneficial or applicable to their career aspirations, or maybe just want a Masters that they think might be easier than a CS Masters (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Bottom line is that your own career situation will determine whether a MIS or CS is better for you. You could always get a Masters in CS that focuses on software engineering with courses in things such as project management and the like, if you wanted to move towards management but keep your hands on the technical side.
[ April 01, 2002: Message edited by: Jason Menard ]

[Jamie Robertson]

in Canada,
grade 0-8 is Elementary School
grade 9-12 is Secondary School
College/University...etc is post-secondary.
Jamie

[Jim Yingst]

Actually I think it's the same in the US - except that the term "secondary school" isn't really used that much, so not everyone necessarily has the same idea what it means. But I note that googling "secondary school" yeilds a number of US-oriented sites dealing with pre-college-level schools. Names for different types of schools are not entirely standardized in the US. Generally "elementary school" means at least grades 1-3, and possibly as much as K-6. "High school" means 9-12 or sometimes 10-12. In between you may have "middle school" (4-5) and/or "junior high school" (6-8), or other names/combinations.

[Jason Menard]

Yep I definitely could have been wrong. "Secondary" education is not a term we generally use.

[shilpa kulkarni]

I had originally asked the question in relation to an income tax deduction. I finally called up their 1-800... number and they said that freshman and sophomore years after high school count as first 2 years of post-secondary education as mentioned in their forms.
Funny how they use a term in their forms which is not widely used otherwise!
Thanks Jamie / Jim / Jason.