What is a master's degree?

Hi,

  We recently hired someone who's resume' said "Master's degree" but
looking at their resume they only had 2 years of college TOTAL. i
asked my co-worker about it and he said he saw this difference in
naming in Europe. That the European calls a 2 year degree a Master's
degree. In the USA we call this an Associate's degree. I have for
years wondered how people who claimed to have masters seemed to be
missing much of the basic fundamentals of computer science... because
they didn't even have a junior or senior year of college, much less a
graduate education. So, I now realize Europe and India use the word
'masters' to mean 'associates'; do any other countries or regions also
have this confusion?

Thanks!
Tim