I am a person who don’t know much about the system in higher education
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It can vary across countries so this will only refer to the American system here.
The obvious difference is just different levels of total education. A Bachelors degree, usually divided into either a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science, generally takes 4 years of higher education traditionally, though can be completed in 3-5 or even faster or slower in rare circumstances. It is just a certificate to show that the institute you attended has decided that you have received and appropriate level of education in whatever subject the bachelors is for. This will usually involve both some amount of “general education” regardless of the subject you choose that tries to give you a solid foundation in all basic subjects, as well as more specific coursework related to that subject. There isn’t really effective much difference between a BA and BS these days, and it’s usually just dependent on the subject with BAs being associated with the liberal arts and a BS being associated with STEM subjects. If you REALLY want to squint you can say they focus on slightly different skill sets, but if you really care about the difference at all you probably got a BS.
Above that is a Master’s degree, which almost always wants you to already have a Bachelor’s degree before being accepted into the program. Programs that award Master’s degrees are usually designed to be 1-2 years long, but you can take longer. You are expected to already have a full understanding of the basic subject that course is for and this is when you get REALLY in-depth into that field, quite literally mastering it. This traditionally was the degree that showed you were qualified to teach others the subject at a University level. Masters degrees will usually involve a thesis or project at the end for you to demonstrate your mastery of the subject, but this isn’t universal. You can sorta consider this as a Bachelor’s plus, as it’s still somewhat similar, just much more in depth and complete. Someone with a Bachelor’s degree is primed to start in the field they studied, but with a Master’s, more is expected of you from the very beginning as you don’t need to learn as much (as a generality).
Finally, a PhD, JD, MD, EdD, etc, or a Doctorate, is the highest level degree you can get. These are usually divided into two categories, Professional Degrees and Research Degrees. The former includes things like Doctors of Law and Doctors of Medicine as the most common ones, where the field requires VERY intense and extensive specialized knowledge and usually exams or other proof of your education on top of the degree to even enter that field. These require at least 6 years of higher education total, some of which may count from your previous Bachelor’s education and you are generally expected to have a full Bachelor’s degree before even being admitted so they are often 2-4 additional years on top, 3 being the most common.
On the other side, research doctorates, the classic example is a Doctor of Philosophy or PhD, which has nothing to do with the subject of philosophy and can be in any subject. Like masters degrees, these were originally intended to display your competence to teach in higher education, but like the name says they are now associated mostly with submitting research in that chosen field. This is done by coming up with a Doctoral Dissertation where you are expected to submit a paper that is peer reviewed and actually advances the field you are in to some small degree. Thus unlike a masters, where you just show mastery of a subject being taught, to get a PhD you can’t just learn what is already known, you have to produce something new and improve the field you are in for future people. This can take a tremendously wide range of time because the courses you take aren’t the point, they exist to supplement your knowledge to the highest possible degree within a very narrow part of the field, and producing an adequate thesis can take years and years of study and hard work. They are usually 4-6 years or so on average, but really range from like 1-8 or so, and longer isn’t THAT rare. It’s really dictated by your own pace and the field you are in, with many different norms across different fields.
A final small note, there are also Associates degrees, which are 2 year degrees that Community Colleges traditionally award. They are simpler than Bachelors degrees and can either prepare you for certain fields that don’t require as much general education of even be a way to get your “general education” completed before you choose a field you want to actually study, as bachelors degrees tend to VERY ROUGHLY be divided into two years of general education and two years of more specialized focus on your subject.
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