The official equivalent of a masters degree is a masters degree. Continuing vocational education after graduation is not post graduate work, and does not confer anything like the equivalent of a masters degree. At best it makes you a better journeyman in your chosen trade.
Correct, I say from the perspective of having earned a living both in academia and in the professional world.
While certificate-granting institutions like to say their courses are the equivalent of degrees, there is no standard for determining this. Hence "degree equivalents" have meaning only to an employer looking to hire, and only to the degree he wants to believe it. They have no meaning in academia, which is the point here. Vixen claims her "postgraduate" study resulted in the "equivalent" of two Master's degrees (in accounting).
Degrees come from degree-granting institutions. Those in turn are accredited. Accreditation, in response, is a function of the agreements between degree-granting institutions. This achieves uniformity and testability of a qualification. And this confidence is what drives the rest of the industry that depends upon degrees as reliable descriptors of achievement, knowledge, and skill.
In order to sit for the engineer's licensing exam, you must have a degree in engineering. Not an "equivalent." Not a degree in "engineering." The list of acceptable diplomas is clear and documented, and the accreditation requirements for the institutions granting a qualifying degree are also clear and documented. Since there is no commensurate rhyme or reason to the claimants of "equivalents" to those degrees, no purported equivalents are accepted.
Licensure aside, in the real world it doesn't matter. You either know your stuff or you don't. And if you know your stuff, you can demonstrate that you do. I often tell the story of the one time our head of mechanical engineering in my company didn't have a BSME degree. But his hobby was building race cars from scratch (including fabricating the engines and drive trains) and racing them. He remains to this day one of the most qualified engineers I know, and I work occasionally in the space program. His visible success is a profound adjudication of his skill.
However, if the claim is that one has
academically acquired expertise, then the particulars of the claim must be evaluated in an
academic framework. You don't get credit for "equivalents." You either have the degree or you don't—regardless of how much you know or how you learned it. You are either in a program or you are not; and I sadly had to gently break the news to a couple of PhD candidates that no, they were no longer in our program and could no longer call themselves "post-graduates" in it.
And no, if you wrote a term paper in your psychology class as an undergraduate, under no valid academic circumstances do you get to call yourself a "psychology post-grad" if you are not studying psychology in a degree-granting institution after earning your bachelor's degree in whatever. That's just misleading wordplay.
