Terrence Said:

Has anyone ever gotten a Bachelor's degree, and then another... *after graduating?

We Answered:

When I was younger in my first trip through the university I let everyone (parents, relatives, society, etc...) convince me that I needed to study something "practical" and so I dropped from my music major and studied nursing instead. It was faster, easier, and led to a better paying job that I really didn't like. A job I didn't keep very long. I joined the Army to be a musician instead (so much for my impractical degree plan) and stayed in the Army until I retired. [and would have retired at a much higher pay grade had I finished that "impractical" degree in music]

I always regretted not having that degree in music and I resented the people that pushed me to do something "practical" - in my case music would have been far more "practical". So, after the Army retired me, I went back to school full-time to get my degree in music. Not because I need it now but because I wanted it. I was 40 years old in the full-time day program of a state university studying music (specifically flute playing) with a bunch of young people who had dreams of being musicians or music teachers who were also hearing that they should do something "practical" instead. Some of them even made it to musician land.

I liked learning stuff a lot - it's way easier the second time around and everything just seems to make sense. The only real problem - there's no financial aid for second bachelor's degree getters and departments don't like to fund us either. Some of the students had a raised eyebrow or two as did some professors but most didn't care about the age thing. The level of the work was very often boring to me. I liked it though - suddenly a lot of my life's observations made perfect sense.

I liked it so much that I haven't stopped yet. I'm finalizing the thesis on my third master's degree. There's a lot of cool stuff left to learn about and it helps keep my brain working. I'm thinking that I'd like to do a science as one next too, just to balance the brain some. Then again, Literature sounds interesting too. Maybe psychology. Who knows - I haven't learned everything yet so there are plenty of choices.

One thing my education travels did was make me an HR Consultant specializing in Human Capital Development. I see this issue of "retraining" all the time now. But it's not retraining in new (additional) job skills - it's a lot of people going back to school to learn some marketable skill because their first time around was not "practical" (at least not in terms of where they went with it). They hit the job market with generic skills they thought would achieve a goal their parent's generation saw happen with "a degree in anything" and found out those days are over and they need something specific. They're sitting one promotion away from a sweet deal and the barrier is that their degree isn't in business/accounting/technology/engineeri… and nobody promotes a BA in History to VP of Finance anymore. They're being passed over for often less able employees because their diploma doesn't have the right words on it. They're also being passed over for some more capable employees who did get the "right words" and actually learned the industry.

I'd suggest though if you want to go back to school and are truly interested in academic learning as opposed to vocation, explore graduate programs. Most aren't as interested in your undrgrad major as they are in your proven ability to do the work in their program. It's a lot more interesting in grad school.