Qualifications - Mgr Title on my business card?

Hi all,

If I have a Master's degree (MSci) from a UK university, and move to Poland, can I use the title Mgr. on my business card, since it's an equivalent qualification?

Thanks

I suppose you could but if you did that you might be suggesting to people that you have a Magister degree (which you clearly do not). Why translate the title at all? Apart from anything else, few British universities will agree with you that Mgr is as high as an MSc.

Aren't tytuł magistra and master's degree synonymous? If not, what is the difference?

For a start, a Master's from a British university can't be done in five years after the end of schooling every second weekend. Almost all Poles overlook that a BA in the UK is a two-part deal: first college (two years) and then university (three years for some courses, four for languages and any industry-specific courses). One example: a Magister in French can be done in four years of post-secondary school education, a BA will take six years. This is why British universities will not generally accept a Magister as being equivalent to an MA.

Thanks for the responses. I thought that a Magister was equivalent to a Master's, but if its only equivalent to a BSc at best then I needn't bother anyway!

I would say that a full-time Magister is as good as a good BSc (i.e. 2:1 or above). But for a extra-mural magister from a private university, all bets are off.

Try to skim through similar threads. There were a lot of them on these forums...

... none of which answered my original question regarding the title, hence the post.

https://polishforums.com/study/magister-masters-degree-same-41804/

There's probably more but I'm not gonna bother looking for you. This one says exactly the same thing those guys said above and much more. Using a search function should be a piece a cake for an MSc.

I appreciate you looking for a relevant thread but I'd already read it! Maybe if I rephrase my question in simpler terms you'll see that my question wasn't answered in it. My question wasn't asking if a Master's degree and a Magister were the same. I had already, wrongly assumed that they were equivalent, but that wasn't the crux of the question. The answer that I was after was regarding the use of the pre-nominal title "Mgr" and specifically, whether the use of the title was restricted to those who had achieved a Polish Magister qualification, or whether a holder of a UK Master's degree, as an equivalent (or better) qualification, could aptly use the title on, for instance, a CV or business card.

My apologies if I've missed the answer to that question in the thread that you just linked to. I can't seem to see it. Perhaps you could quote it?

The problem with putting Magister on your business card is that no English-medium university gives that type of degree and so you'll be misrepresenting your qualification as one gained in a language other than English. Even if you are fluent in another language, going down the road of claiming you're fluent enough to do a post-grad qualification in it is somewhat dangerous, especially in Poland: Poles will pretty much automatically assume that you're talking about a degree from a Polish uni and thus be increduous when you aren't fluent in Polish....

Good point, maybe I'll just stick with the English post-nominal! Thanks for the advice.

It's not so straightforward as saying that they aren't equal, because you have the headache of comparing pre and post Bologna magister degrees too. Probably the only real, fair way to compare the two is to compare what was studied (and the amount of hours) for each module - some Polish degrees are ridiculously soft, whereas some are much harder. The one thing that really lets the Polish system down is the way that 5th year modules can actually be easier than 1st year modules - which is clearly nonsense. The same nonsense is seen in primary and secondary education.


Stay away from doing it. There's just no need - MSc is known and recognised, and it allows you to make it clear that you studied somewhere in the English speaking world. Whether or not all Magister qualifications are inferior could be argued about all day - my own opinion is that some are equal, some aren't - but it is certain that it would be stupid to say that your degree is one of them when it clearly isn't.

In Poland the trend nowadays is moving away from pre-nominal titles unless the business card is for somebody in an academic role - in which case it is often DrHab (a thing specific to continental Europe).

Pre-nominals are increasingly old-fashioned here.

Interestingly, in teaching, they're still used as well.

Having said that, the Polish high school culture of calling a teacher "professor" when they don't have such an academic title is completely wrong. I have a friend who is a genuine professor who teaches at an academic high school connected to the university, and he said that they tell students from the first day that they should always use the correct academic title to address someone.

I remember finding the use of academic titles at the university to be quite strange to begin with, but actually, it works well when you consider that it's recognition of their professional achievements.

I still think it's worth putting an Masters-level qualification on your business card, but putting BA/lic.is ridiculous.

Yes, it is a pre-war tradition when a lot of academic teachers used to work in high schools. Funny how teachers managed to keep it until today. But I don`t like this tradition, to be honest - teachers should strive to gain for students` respect in another way. .

Yes, agreed. I don't think it's right to misuse an academic title in that way.

If anything, they should be addressed with their actual academic title and not a title that they haven't earnt.