Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course that generally lasts three years in most of the United Kingdom (except Scotland, where four is customary) or four years in North America. Note that some postgraduate degrees are entitled Bachelor of ..., e.g. the University of Oxford Bachelor of Civil Law.
In some countries the degree is awarded either as a pass degree or as an honours degree, the latter denoted by the appearance of '(Hons)' after the degree abbreviation. An honours degree requires a high academic standard and in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, an extra year of study; this extra year may involve independent research and writing a thesis. An honours degree is sometimes accepted in place of a Master's degree as prerequisite for Ph.D study.
There are two main types of bachelor's degree, the BA or AB (Bachelor of Arts) and the BSc (UK- and Commonwealth-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 BSc's, making even a physics graduate a Bachelor of Arts. Additionally, students of Trinity College, Dublin, from both the arts and sciences faculties may be awarded the honors BA(Mod) 'Moderatorship' degree.
In India, the bachelor's degree lasts for three or four years. BA, BSc, BCom (commerce) are the popular three year courses. BE (Engineering) and BTech (Technology) last for four years.
In the UK, medical students are traditionally awarded a double bachelor's degree after five years of study: MB BS or MBChB. 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:
A full list of British degree abbreviations is available
See also
