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Bachelor's degree

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A bachelor's degree is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course that generally lasts three years in the UK (except Scotland, where four is customary) or four years in North America.
In some countries the degree is awarded either as a pass degree or as an honours degree which requires a high academic standard and, in some cases, an extra year of study.

There are two main types of bachelor's degree, the BA or AB (Bachelor of Arts) and the BSc (UK-usage) or BS (US-usage) (Bachelor of Science), awarded in subjects that fall into the general categories of arts and science respectively. There are no hard and fast rules about this; for example, the University of Cambridge has no BScs, making even a physics graduate a Bachelor of Arts.

In the UK, medical students are traditionally awarded a double bachelor's degree after five years of study: MB BS or MB BCh. These are the bachelor of medicine and the bachelor of surgery degrees. Unlike other UK undergraduate degrees, these are not divided into honours classifications.

In the last hundred years, the range of bachelor's degrees has expanded beyond the traditional BA and BSc.
Some of these new degrees and their abbreviations include:

In the UK, bachelor's degrees can be awarded with or without "honours". In practice, it is usual to award a degree without honours to a candidate who has marginally failed the honours examination. Honours degrees are classified as follows:

  • First Class Honours. In most universities, this is the highest bachelor's degree which can be achieved, though some institutions award "starred firsts" to candidates of exceptional ability.
  • Second Class Honours. This is further sub-divided into Upper Second (or 2:1) and Lower Second (or 2:2). The bulk of university graduates are almost evenly divided between these two classes. The Lower Second is usually the minimum standard required for postgraduate study and/or membership of a professional body (though nowadays an Upper Second is often required).
  • Third Class Honours. This is the lowest honours classification in most modern universities, though Oxford used to award Fourths.

See also:

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