No, and it is shameful that some schools make you believe that it is. Most schools of continuing and professional studies are what are called “extension” programs. They are seen by universities as a way of bringing in significant revenues by offering programs to the general public, including those who already have graduated from college, as well as those who might never have qualified to go to that college in the first place. They may offer individual courses, certificate programs and, in a few cases, degrees. But they are generally open to anyone, and most of the courses are not transferrable to other universities for credit. In addition, most of them hire different faculty, and by different processes and standards, than do their regular colleges. For example, at many of the schools where I’ve taught in the business school, they wouldn’t dream of hiring a faculty member without a Ph.D. and/or significant experience in the field they are teaching. The faculty have to interview each person and vote on whether or not they are qualified to teach. At many of those same universities, the Continuing Studies or Extension program has an administrator, often without ANY academic or business experience, hiring all of the faculty in all subject matters single-handedly. They may hire someone who has nothing more than a bachelor’s degree to teach, and they will hire people to teach courses in areas about which they have no direct experience. I’m not saying that some of the courses offered may not be very good (I’ve taken some foreign language classes from a senior faculty member who wanted the extra income and some good creative writing courses for fun), but you need to ask a lot more questions before enrolling in one of these programs if you want a degree which will count toward something.

Continuing and professional studies are usually graduate programs, such as law school or master’s degree programs. You have to already go to “normal college” and graduate with a bachelor’s degree before you can get into a professional studies program.

not really. most colleges have you take courses to make you well-rounded (literature, psych, art, etc.) but a business/professional prep school is just hard-core working-world skills. they leave out all the crappy frouff.