Bachelor of Applied Arts

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Bachelor of Applied Arts (BAA) is a bachelor's undergraduate degree with more specialization in qualitative aspects of a discipline, often requiring skill. The stereotype of term "Applied Arts" is that it is vocational, not academic, which, by definition, is not the primary mission of most major academic institutions.

A Bachelor of Applied Arts degree is distinguished from a Bachelor of Applied Science (BAS) in that it focuses more on qualitative aspects while the latter focuses more on quantitative, mechanical, physical sciences, natural sciences, and such. While applied arts was once considered vocational, it has flourished at many universities over the last 75 years as highly a sophisticated and complex academic discipline, spanning myriad fields.

Major academic institutions would likely structure the curriculum of Architecture as applied arts and that of Structural Engineering as applied sciences; though many universities would classify the former plainly as "Architecture" and the latter as "Engineering". Most major institutions offer a combination of arts and sciences, partly because the related discipline requires knowledge of both.

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