Dictionary: honours degree

honours plural noun 1 said of a university degree: a higher grade of distinction for specialized or advanced work. http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/feat...

it depends a lot on the university from which the degree is. Sometimes there are also first-, second- class honours degrees. So from which country/univeristy is the degree?

At my university, you could get a pass without an honours degree, I think if your exam results were not good enough for you to get at least a third class honours.

In Australia (and I thought UK but am not sure any more) it is not only advanced, etc but an extra year-four years as opposed to three.

In Australia (and I thought UK but am not sure any more) it is not only advanced, etc but an extra year-four years as opposed to three.

Scottish universities seem to have a tendency to do the basic studies in four rather than three years, as is the case in England. (Someone told me it's partly because in Scottland they finish school one year earlier than in England, can't guarantee the correctness of this information.) The four-year course in Scotland do lead to a honours degree.

Sorry about the Baden Baden effect in my postings

An English bachelor's degree in languages, for instance, is usually a four-year course, including a year abroad, but some other degrees may only take three years.

The "grade" in most universities can be:

First class honours
Second class honours, upper division ("upper second")
Second class honours, lower division ("lower second")
Third class honours
Pass

If you want to go into university teaching or get a grant for postgraduate study, you probably want a First. I believe some companies prefer an Upper Second (not too academic).
It may have changed a little since my time, though.

Honours degrees were originally the 'fast track' to a PhD for the more academically able. Anyone with a 1st class or 2/1 Honours could go on to a PhD immediately; rather than having to complete a Masters first. Some Honours programs consisted of an intensive three year course, others tacked a year onto a 3 year bachelors, but in both cases admission was limited to the academically able. In order to enter an Honours program a student had to have earned exceptionally good grades.

Nowadays Honours often merely means a 4 year program rather than a program for students with academic ability.

This system originated at Oxord University, where people with good Honours degrees often immediately got an academic position without having to proceed down the tedious, not so gifted PhD path eg Isaiah Berlin.

In Britain at least, whether you get an honours degree or not has nothing to do with it being a 4 or 3 year programme. The vast majority of students end up with honours degrees. There's 1st class honours (10 -15%), which now in many subjects is the only way to get accepted for a PhD, upper second (2.1), lower second (2.2) or third. All these are honours degrees. Under that is a pass degree, but only about 5% get awarded this. Very few people fail the finals, because they've usually left the programme beforehand if there is an academic problem. Maybe this is different with the 'new' universities (which used to be the polytechnics), but it's certainly true of the older unis.
At a few universities, it's possible to get awarded a master degree a few years after the bachelors for no extra work (but for a juicy fee!). I think Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Trinity, Dublin all do this. You can legally call yourself MA after this.

A Maters for no extra work, but for a juicy fee?

I thought it was only US or Online universities that sold degrees!

@DW(EN)
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/degrees/ma/

at our great universites - Oxford, Cambridge ... and Hull? ;-)

At least for the Scottisch Unis I can say, that you get the MA for an extra year's studying and not for free.
You could leave after third year with a Bachelor Degree. You HAVE to leave after third year if your marks are not good enough at the end of second year and you do not make it into honours. Then, they allow you to finish 3rd year and get a bachelor.

says someone with a MA 2:1 Honours ;-)

oh - and forgot to say: yes, one can go straight into a PhD from a Scottisch Masters!

molahs 21 Jun 07 17:41 said:
"Kommentar: Honours degrees were originally the 'fast track' to a PhD for the more academically able. Anyone with a 1st class or 2/1 Honours could go on to a PhD immediately; rather than having to complete a Masters first. Some Honours programs consisted of an intensive three year course, others tacked a year onto a 3 year bachelors, but in both cases admission was limited to the academically able. In order to enter an Honours program a student had to have earned exceptionally good grades."
and
Richard 07 May 07 11:59 said:
"In Australia (and I thought UK but am not sure any more) it is not only advanced, etc but an extra year-four years as opposed to three."

I come from Australia. for (a partly hypothetical) example: I did a one year "honours degree" and then five-year PhD. The Honour's degree was a prerequisite to applying for the PhD.
So the progression of study goes: Highschool -->Bachelor's Degree --> Honour's Degree --> Doctorate. When talking about these qualifications in German, I Believe that highschool = "Arbitur", Bachelor's = "Hochschulabschluss" or "der Bakkalaureus" and Doctorate = "Das Doktorat" or "Promoverien"....

BUT!!! Which word can I use for "honour's degree" in German?

That's not quite the same as in the UK. As I understand it, the word Honours is simply added if you attain a First or 2.1 for your degree. Certainly, my degree course was a B.Sc. and yet my degree certificate says "The Degree of BACHELOR OF SCIENCE with First Class Honours". There was no Honours program, it was just a standard three year course (plus a year abroad by virtue of the fact that one of my subjects was German, as it was actually a Joint Honours course), and nobody tacked a year onto a 3 year bachelors, nor was admission any different to the bachelors course.

@DW, I'm slightly surprised to find you falling into the same trap as yackydar and making a statement about "the UK (or British)" education system.

The Scottish and English systems are so totally different, that you cannot sensibly speak of a (common) UK or British education system.

Roughly summarised, you could say that the Scottish system aims at producing generalists, whereas the English system aims to produce specialists. Also, there's no point in arguing which system is better, both approaches are necessary and one could argue that the UK is well served by having both system alongside one another. Having said that, I must admit that I do tend to believe that a generalist education is more appropriate for an engineer, but that may just be my rose-tinted Scottish engineer's glasses! :)

One thing I do think is more sensible about the Scottish system is that it retains the pyramid structure of the qualifications, ie the (vast?) majority of graduates leave a Scottish university with an ordinary degree and only a minority with an honours degree - this seems to me more logical than the English system, where only about 5% of the university graduates have an ordinary degree (which is then generally regarded as being a failed honours degree).

Good point, RMA. Sorry, for making such a general statement. I was, of course, referring to the English system (not having any personal experience of the Scottish system.

I know that a great many fantastic engineers have come from Scotland over the years though.

Kylie-Ree, ein BA hons. wäre noch am ehesten mit dem guten alten deutschen (und österreichischen) Magister zu vergleichen. Das war zwar der erste Abschluss, den man erlangen konnte, also eher wie ein Bachelor's, aber man musste 4-5 Jahre mindestens dafür studieren (und hat meistens länger gebraucht, 6-7 Jahre), am Ende eine wissenschaftliche Magisterarbeit schreiben (80-200 Seiten, je nach Fach) und hatte damit die Berechtigung, ein Doktorats-/Promotionsstudium zu beginnen, also in diesem Sinne eher wie ein Master's.