I’ve been trying to find out what it all means, like there’s Bachelor’s degree, Doctorate, Bachelor of Design and Master of Education. But what do they mean? Is a bachelor’s degree the lowest degree you can get and master’s is the highest or do different courses have different names for their degrees?
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I’ve seen some US/UK/Germany discourse here, so going to add Australia!
Usually you will start with a 3 year Bachelors’ degree.
You can add a 4th year called ‘Honours’ to spice this up, which is usually a combination of some coursework and a short thesis (ballpark of 15,000 words).
The next tier is Masters, which is usually 2 years, and depending on the discipline (etc) can be done by coursework and/or by writing a thesis. This thesis would be a step up from the honours thesis, perhaps closer to 20-30,000 words? (Correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t have a Masters!)
From there, you can do a PhD. You can also move straight from Honours to PhD in some cases (I did, because I was offered a PhD scholarship, which felt like a better deal than paying to do my Masters first). This may also include a little coursework but the focus is a large-scale thesis of about 80,000-100,000 words. My uni heavily encouraged a 3-year timeframe for completion but it is longer in most other countries. Once that’s done (and passed), you are now Doctor! This used to represent the peak of an academic career but these days it’s more like an entry point to serious academia.
Most universities also offer other qualifications, like graduate diplomas, which fall a little outside of the Bach/Masters/PhD hierarchy and are usually shorter and/or can be done concurrently with other degrees.
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