Bachelor's degree

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(Redirected from Bachelor degree)

A bachelor's degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts three or four years. (Note that some postgraduate degrees are entitled Bachelor of ..., e.g. the University of Oxford's Bachelor of Civil Law and Bachelor of Philosophy.)

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Honours degrees and academic distinctions

Under the British system, and those influenced by it such as the Irish, Indian, Singaporean, and Hong Kong systems, undergraduate degrees are differentiated either as pass degrees or as honours degrees, the latter denoted by the appearance of "(Hons)" after the degree abbreviation. An honours degree generally requires a higher academic standard than a pass degree, and in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, and Canada an extra year of study.

Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees

Today, the most common undergraduate degrees given are the Bachelor of Arts (B.A. or A.B.) and the Bachelor of Science (B.Sc. in Commonwealth usage or B.S. in U.S. usage). Originally, in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge all undergraduate degrees were in the Faculty of Arts, hence the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Since the late 19th century, most universities in the English-speaking world have followed the practice of the University of London in dividing undergraduate degree subjects into the two broad categories of arts and sciences, awarding the degree of Bachelor of Science to students of the latter category of subjects.

New bachelor's degrees

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are perhaps alone today in awarding the B.A. for all undergraduate degrees. However, in most universities over the last hundred years the range of bachelors' degrees has expanded enormously, especially in Australia and New Zealand, where the B.A. degree is increasingly uncommon.

Some of these new degrees and their abbreviations include:

A full list of British degree abbreviations is also available.

See also

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