Postgraduate education

See also: Postgraduate Training in Education

Degree ceremony at Cambridge.

Postgraduate education (often known in North America as graduate education, and sometimes described as quaternary education) involves studying for degrees or other qualifications for which a first or Bachelor's degree is required, and is normally considered to be part of tertiary or higher education. In North America this level is generally referred to as graduate school.

The organization and structure of postgraduate education is very different in different countries, and also in different institutions within countries. This article sets out the basic types of course and of teaching and examination methods, with some explanation of their history.

In some programs in the traditional German system, there is no legal distinction between "undergraduate" and "postgraduate". In such programs, all education aims towards the Master's degree, whether introductory (Bachelor's level) or advanced (Master's level). The aim of the Bologna process is to abolish this system.

Types of postgraduate qualification

There are four main types of qualification studied for at the postgraduate level: academic and vocational degrees, and academic and vocational certificates and diplomas.

Degrees

The term "degree" in this context means the moving from one stage or level to another (from the Latin "de-" + "gradus", through Old French "degre"), and first appeared in the 13th century.

History

Although systems of higher education go back to Ancient Greece, China, India, and Africa of course, the concept of postgraduate education depends upon the system of awarding degrees at different levels of study, and can be traced to the workings of the European mediæval universities.

University studies took six years for a Bachelor degree and up to twelve additional years for a master's degree or doctorate. The first six years taught the faculty of the arts, which was the study of the seven liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music theory, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The main emphasis was on logic. Once a Bachelor of Arts degree had been obtained, the student could choose one of three faculties — law, medicine, or theology — in which to pursue master's or doctor's degrees. Theology was the most prestigious area of study, and considered to be the most difficult.

The degrees of master (magister) and doctor were for some time equivalent, "the former being more in favour at Paris and the universities modelled after it, and the latter at Bologna and its derivative universities. At Oxford and Cambridge a distinction came to be drawn between the Faculties of Law, Medicine, and Theology and the Faculty of Arts in this respect, the title of Doctor being used for the former, and that of Master for the latter." Because theology was thought to be the highest of the subjects, the doctorate came to be thought of as higher than the master's.

The main significance of the higher, postgraduate degrees was that they licensed the holder to teach ("doctor" comes from the Latin "docere", meaning "teach"; "magister" is Latin for "master", and is also the root of "magistrate").

Modern situation

In most English-speaking countries, the hierarchy of degrees is as follows:

1. Associate's degree (chiefly in the United States of America) or Foundation degree (in the UK)

   Usually two years (20 courses or 60 semester credit-hours); often an intermediate degree before finishing Bachelor's. In the UK, a foundation degree is typically 240 credits (whereas a full Bachelor with honours is 360 credits).

2. Bachelor's degrees (undergraduate degrees; first degrees).

   Usually three or four years (40 courses or 120 semester credit-hours); in a few cases, a degree called "bachelor" is in fact a postgraduate degree — see, for example, Bachelor of Civil Law, Bachelor of Philosophy. An Honours Bachelor's degree may be conferred upon those completing a four-year program, to differentiate it from a three-year Bachelor's. In France there is the Licence degree which is equivalent of the Bachelor.

3. Master's degrees

   These are sometimes placed in a further hierarchy, starting with degrees such as the Master of Arts and Master of Science, then Master of Philosophy, and finally Master of Letters, and a DEA in France. In many fields such as clinical social work, or library science in North America, a Master's is the terminal degree.

4. First Professional degrees

   First professional degrees are required for professional licensure or entrance to a specific career. These degrees require a bachelor's degree for admission into the program, followed by three to four years of specialized study. They are mainly found in North America; elsewhere professional education for careers such as law and medicine is mainly undertaken through specialised undergraduate degrees and post-university vocational courses that do not confer academic degrees. Graduates in some cases are called doctor and the degree program sometimes includes the word doctor.

5. Doctorates

   These are often further divided into academic and professional doctorates.

   An academic doctorate can be awarded as a Ph.D. (Philosophiæ Doctor), or as a DSc (Scientiae Doctor). The scientiae doctor degree can be also be awarded in specific fields, such as a Dr.sc.math (Doctor scientiarum mathematicarum, Doctor of Mathematics), Dr.sc.agr. (Doctor scientiarum agrariarum, Doctor of Agricultural science), etc. In some parts of Europe, doctorates are divided into the Ph.D. or 'junior doctorate', and the 'higher doctorates' such as the DSc, which is generally awarded to highly distinguished professors. A doctorate is the terminal degree in most fields. In the United States, there is little distinction between a Ph.D. and D.Sc.

In the UK and countries whose education systems were founded on the British model, such as the U.S., the master's degree was for a long time the only postgraduate degree normally awarded, while in most European countries apart from the UK, the master's degree almost disappeared. In the second half of the 19th century, however, U.S. universities began to follow the European model by awarding doctorates, and this practice spread to the UK. Conversely, most European universities now offer master's degrees parallelling or replacing their regular system, so as to offer their students better chances to compete in an international market dominated by the American model.

Honorary degrees

Most universities award honorary degrees, usually at the postgraduate level. These are awarded to a wide variety of people, such as artists, musicians, writers, politicians, businesspeople, etc., in recognition of their achievements in their various fields. (Recipients of such degrees do not normally use the associated titles or letters, such as "Dr".)

Non-degree qualifications

Postgraduate education can involve studying for qualifications such as postgraduate certificates and postgraduate diplomas — normally held to be lower than degrees. They are sometimes used as steps on the route to a degree, or as part of training for a specific career, or as a qualification in an area of study too narrow to warrant a full degree course.

See also

• Postgraduate diploma
• Postgraduate certificate
• Postgraduate Certificate in Education
• Postgraduate Diploma in Education
• Postgraduate research
• Professional Master's degree, including a list
• List of education articles by country
• List of Postgraduate-Only Institutions
• List of colleges and universities by country
• Online MBA Programs
• Undergraduate education

Sources and external links

• J.A. Burns. "Master of Arts" (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909)
• E.A. Pace. "Doctor" (The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1909)