York’s Senate and Board of Governors are being petitioned to change the name of the Bachelor of Administrative Studies to a Bachelor of Commerce degree, this time, with higher hopes for success.
The BAS is a business program, part of the School of Administrative Studies. However, many students find that the “BAS” name does not appropriately represent the business program, therefore they desire a name change to BCom, which they believe is more fitting. A major issue brought up by supporters of the petition is that the current name of the program is confusing and is not recognizable to employers.
“If you’re submitting your CV online, it gets instantly binned because they have search algorithms these days that look for keywords,” says Charles Dreezer, who started the petition on Change.org.
The name change is also very important for alumni of the program who are currently in the job market, he adds.
“One of the key things we’ve been pushing for since the beginning of the petition is that if the name does change we want alumni to be able to retroactively elect to use the BCom name instead of a BAS.”
Dreezer started the petition with Pritesh Patel, both alumni of the BAS program. They started out with pen and paper but soon realized how an online petition would be more efficient, leading them to use Change.org.
After speaking in many lecture halls and leveraging social media, the petition started to take off and currently holds 2,360 supporters.
According to Dreezer, the School of Administrative Studies has formally approved of the name change and the Liberal Arts and Professional Studies faculty is also in support of the change, taking the matter to Senate.
“In the senate portion of it all, of the different faculties [that] get to have a say in it … they had tried it in the past, but really Schulich blocked it because it wasn’t really in their interest.”
Schulich did not respond in time for publication.
Dreezer is confident the name change will be a success and says, “The petition is not so consequential at this point, it’s just a matter of when this is going to happen.”
Excalibur contacted the LAPS student government to see how people are reacting to the petition.
“A fair number of students want to see the BAS degree changed to a BCom degree,” says Dalubuhle Ndlovu, SCOLAPS executive and student senator.
“We are looking to put these matters forward at the next faculty council and Senate meeting.”
The provost and the dean have had an opportunity to discuss the student petition for changing the name of the BAS degree to a BCom degree, says Joanne Rider, media relations.
“As it happens, this proposal is already part of the planning for the delivery of the program at the new Markham campus.”
“However, understanding the significant interest on the part of the students currently enrolled in the BAS program, the faculty intends to begin work with the School of Administrative Studies on a proposal for a nomenclature change this year,” says Rider.
“The community will be updated as work on this proposal progresses.”
Tahseen Mia, Contributor
I believe the need to change the BAS degree to a Bcom degree is very important and should proceed as soon as possible to avoid employers looking down on smart graduates because their degree does not say Bcom or BBA.