| What is a Tertiary Degree? |
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 In North America, we are accustomed to many educational terms like elementary school, middle school, high school, college, technical school, vocational school, university, professional school, etc. Often times our terms help us to distinguish between levels of education, but sometimes they refer to the content, the goal, or even the method of education. Still despite the potential for confusion, through years of hearing these terms, we become comfortable navigating their ranges of meaning. When we step outside North America many things change, including the terminology for educational levels and degree programs. In many African countries, the word "college" refers to a middle school or junior high school. So many Africans would find it strange to hear a 20 year old say, "I'm a college student." In England the equivalent of a North American Associate's Degree is called a Foundation Degree. In France, the term Baccalauréat refers to the level of education you complete before entering university. Many of the countries of Africa are former English or French colonies, and still follow those systems of education. This makes communicating about education in an international environment a bit difficult, but with a little work we can avoid misunderstandings. In the Transformational Education Network (TEN3), we have chosen to use the the generic terms: primary, secondary, and tertiary to describe levels of education. Currently in TEN3 we work in the area of tertiary education. In the US and Canada, tertiary education includes vocational-technical schools, colleges, and universities. Its degrees are the Associate's Degree (2 year) , Bachelor's Degree (4 year), Master's Degree and Doctorate. This nomenclature for degrees has been adopted by many other countries around the world, but not in all of the African countries where TEN3 works. However the generic term, tertiary education, is understandable almost everywhere where TEN3 works. The main building blocks in the TEN3 educational plan are called:
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TEN3: Explained
TEN3 Explained from George Cail on Vimeo.
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