What classes do you have to take to receive an Associates of Applied Science in NC?

Answer 1

It's not a state-by-state sort of thing. Rather, it's a requirement of the "regional" accreditor, which accredits schools in multiple states. So it's roughly the same in all 50 US states...

...though it can vary by school, or school system, or accreditor.

An "Associate of Applied Science" (AAS) degree is a career (and not an academic) degree. The associates degrees that are academic are the "Associate of Arts" (AA) and the "Associate of Science" (AS) degree.

Academic degrees like the AA or AS are indended to prepare one for entry into a bachelors degree (BA or BS) program. A career-oriented AAS degree, though, is aimed at preparing someone for a career, and not subsequent entry into a BA or BS program.

Consequently, an AAS degree contains less of what's called "lower division general education" (LDGE) than are contained in either an AA or AS degree. That's only a problem, though, if the AAS holder later decides to try to apply his/her AAS to a BA or BS program. If s/he does, then s/he will likely find himself/herself having to get caught-up on the LDGE before the bachelors program will accept him/her. As long as the AAS degree-seeker knows, positiviely, that the AAS will be the only degree s/he ever pursues, then the AAS is fine.

All associates degrees, whether AA, AS or AAS contain sixty (60) semester credit hours of coursework... give or take. Some schools require 63 or 66, it just depends on the school.

One may not determine, though, what classes one must take for an AAS until one knows in what career area said AAS specializes. Since so little of the AAS contains LDGE, it's fairly safe to say that only the bare minimum amount of LDGE is required in the typical AAS; and said LDGE likely includes one or two "English composition" courses, a math course, a social science course, a natural science course, a couple humanities courses, maybe a speech course, maybe a "how to use a computer and the library" or "how to research" course, and that's pretty much it. So that one may really and truly be prepared for a career from an only-two-year-long AAS degree, the rest of the courses are going to be directly related to whatever is the degree's major (or other courses which are prerequisite to, or support them). So, then, again, without knowing what is the AAS degree's major, it's pretty much impossible to say, beyond the LDGE courses, what courses (or classes) one must take.