What do the different degrees in university mean?

Question

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?

In: 5

Answer 1

College requirements vary, but may typically be decided as such:

1) General requirements – these are courses the university requires of all students

2) Degree requirements- these are the core courses that your degree requires. This is where the Bachelor of Science vs a Bachelor of Art differ. At my university the simplified version is that the difference was typically in the number of science or literature courses required.

3) Major requirements – some majors can be taken under different degrees. Myself, I double majored in computer science and mathematics under the same degree, Bachelor of Science. Many math majors take it as a Bachelor of Art instead because they didn’t like the science requirements and preferred the literature instead. In contrast my first major is only offered under the Bachelor of Science degree.

This brings up the difference between getting two degrees and getting two majors. A double degree would mean fulfilling BOTH degree requirements, whereas my double major shared the same degree and only required to fulfill the additional major requirements. Depending on university, but I believe is typical, you can use credits earned for one major to fulfill the requirements of the second major.

Beyond that you also have minors, which are not recorded on the degree issued, and only awarded along side a major. If I recall correctly it does not require you to fulfill the degree requirements of it would fall under a different degree, but again, it may depend on the university. I minored in physics also mostly due to the number of math and science courses I already had to take.

For Masters and Doctorate it is a similar story, fulfilling the degree and major requirements, but others have already explained those differences.