By Chris Foley and Lisa Canada, US News
You don’t always need to commit to a full degree program to advance your career. Shorter and sometimes less costly, a graduate certificate might be a better option to get ahead. Think of a graduate certificate as a set of courses devoted to a specific topic, designed to build on top of a bachelor’s degree. The certificate may be meant to go deeper into topics already explored in the bachelor’s degree – like adding cybersecurity skills to a computer science degree – or to expand into a new area, like adding competency in human resources for someone in management with any bachelor’s degree. Some certificates might not require an undergraduate degree at all – for example, programs may consider work experience instead – and may take 18 or fewer hours of coursework and about a year to complete. Now, nearly one-fourth of the diplomas awarded by colleges and universities are certificates, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
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