bachelor’s degree
- Also called:
- baccalaureate
bachelor’s degree, undergraduate academic degree conferred on college or university students upon completing coursework, typically over a span of three to six years, depending on the country, field of study, and conditions of the learner. It is usually a prerequisite for those wishing to pursue further studies in order to obtain a postgraduate qualification such as a master’s degree or a doctorate.
A bachelor’s degree corresponds to the Japanese Gakushi Shogo, the Italian laurea triennale, the Greek ptychío, and the Brazilian graduação. It should not be confused with the French baccalauréat, an exam taken at the end of a student’s secondary education, or the Spanish bachillerato, referring to the final stage of secondary-school education. The French education system refers to the bachelor’s degree as a BAC+3, also called a licence.
During the Middle Ages, the bachelor’s degree was merely a stage in the education process, rather than a qualification such as master and doctor, which were already common at the time. This phase entailed the study of grammar, rhetoric, and logic during a period of three to four years, which ended with examinations. The term bachelor stems from the Latin word baccalārius, referring to people of low rank in the feudal hierarchy, but it was later used to refer to students who had passed the baccalaureate exam and were thus in the second stage of their studies.
According to college graduation statistics, 2.038 million bachelor’s degrees were awarded in the United States in 2020, making them the most popular tertiary education qualifications. Degree types include the popular Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Bachelor of Science (B.S.) as well as the Bachelor of Literature (B.Lit.), Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.), and Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech. or B.T.). The American education system distinguishes between the major, or primary, field of study and the minor field of study, which does not necessarily need to be related to the former. For instance, in a B.A. program, a student can major in English with a minor in physics. The leading fields of study are business, health, social sciences and history, engineering, biological and biomedical science, and psychology.
In the United Kingdom, a distinction is made between honours degrees and non-honours degrees, which are also known as ordinary or pass degrees. The honours degree entails a higher academic standard, which may involve an additional year of study and is expressed by adding “(Hons)” to the degree abbreviation, as exemplified by B.A. (Hons). Honours degrees are also awarded in other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Singapore.
Methods of assessment may also vary from country to country. In the United Kingdom, for instance, bachelor’s degrees may involve both exams and coursework as well as a written dissertation in the final year of the course. Upon course completion, learners can be awarded first-class honours if they get an overall mark of 70 percent or above, upper second-class honours if it is between 60 and 69 percent, lower second-class honours if between 50 and 59 percent, third-class honours if between 40 and 49 percent, a pass if the 40 percent mark is missed by a small margin, or a fail. An upper second-class honours is the usual admission requirement for embarking on a master’s degree program. Such grades are also given when marking assessments throughout the course. The American grading system, on the other hand, consists of quality points from 0 to 4, which are equivalent to a grade ranging from F to A or a percentage.
In response to the differences between education systems, initiatives have been introduced to foster cooperation and mutual recognition. Under the Bologna Process, which was launched in 1998–99 in Europe, participants agreed that the length of their undergraduate programs would be at least three years and to further facilitate study-abroad programs such as Erasmus, in compliance with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) and the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). The number of countries participating in the Bologna Process has grown from the original 26 to more than 40.
