Professional degree

A professional degree, formerly known in the US as a first professional degree, is a degree that prepares someone to work in a particular profession, practice, or industry sector often meeting the academic requirements for licensure or accreditation.^[1][2][3][4] Professional degrees may be either graduate or undergraduate entry, depending on the profession concerned and the country, and may be classified as bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees. For a variety of reasons, professional degrees may bear the name of a different level of qualification from their classification in qualifications, e.g., some UK professional degrees are named bachelor's but are at master's level, while some Australian and Canadian professional degrees have the name "doctor" but are classified as master's or bachelor's degrees.^[5][6][7]

History[edit]

History of professional degrees in Europe[edit]

The first doctorates were awarded in the mid twelfth century to recognise teachers (doctors) in mediaeval universities, either in civil law at the University of Bologna^[8] or in theology at the University of Paris.^[9] These were followed shortly afterwards by doctorates in canon law, and then in the thirteenth century by doctorates in medicine, grammar, logic and philosophy. These mediaeval doctorates remained, however, essentially teaching qualifications, with their major importance being the ius ubique docendi – the right to teach anywhere.^[8]

History of professional degrees in the United Kingdom[edit]

The first university medical school to be established in the United Kingdom was at the University of Edinburgh in 1726, followed in 1744 by the University of Glasgow. In 1817, Glasgow became the first British university to offer a separate degree in surgery, the Master of Surgery. However, other Scottish universities – St Andrews and the two universities in Aberdeen – also offered medical degrees, often in absentia and without examination, despite not having medical schools.^[10] In England, the two universities (Oxford and Cambridge) were only sporadically interested in medical teaching, which was mainly carried out in the London hospitals.^[11] It was not until the establishment of the University of London in 1836, however, that students at the hospital medical schools could earn degrees. Following the passing of the Medical Act 1858 and the establishment of the General Medical Council, Scottish graduates gained the right to practice in England and degrees in both medicine and surgery became the norm. The Scottish practice of awarding the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) as a first degree was abolished by the university commissioners appointed under the Universities (Scotland) Act 1858, it being replaced by the Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery (MS), with the MD becoming a higher degree as in England. The commissioners under the Universities (Scotland) Act 1889 completed the reform by replacing the MS with the Bachelor of Surgery, the MS joining the MD as a higher degree and the initial professional qualification taking on its modern form as the double Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery, degree.^[12]

The first university in England to offer training in theology for those intending to become priests in the Church of England was the University of Durham in 1833, following the lead of colleges such as St Bees Theological College and St David's College, Lampeter. The Licence in Theology could be taken as either a one year graduate course, following on from a BA, or a three-year undergraduate course.^[13] Shortly after, in 1837, Durham also became the first British university to teach engineering (although the course closed after a few years), followed only a few months later by King's College London.^[14][15][16]

Anglican theological colleges partnered with local universities to offer professional degrees in theology and ministry during the twentieth century. Since 2014, however, the Common Award degrees, validated by Durham, have offered a more unified training across the theological colleges.^[17] Some colleges continue to offer other degrees in addition to the Common Awards, such as the Cambridge Bachelor of Theology at the Cambridge Theological Federation

Legal studies in England were mainly confined to the Inns of Court until the late nineteenth century. The only undergraduate course was at Cambridge and concentrated on Roman civil law rather than English common law; in terms of employment, that the bishops accepted it as equivalent to a B.A. for ordination was more useful than the legal training it provided, and it was generally seen as an easy option for those who couldn't cope with the mathematics on the B.A. course.^[18] Cambridge reformed its course in 1858, and London established an undergraduate course a few years later. However, it has only been since the 1960s that law schools have taken on a leading role in training lawyers and truly established professional degrees.^[19]

In the latter part of the twentieth century, many chartered bodies introduced educational requirements for their chartered professional statuses, most notably the Engineering Council requirements for Chartered Engineer. This led to the accreditation of degrees by the relevant professional bodies and, in the case of engineering, to the Washington Accord – an international agreement between engineering regulatory bodies to recognise professional degrees accredited in each country – signed originally in 1989 by the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand, and since expanded to include many other countries.^[20] In the twenty-first century, the standard professional degree for many science and engineering fields was raised from bachelor's to master's level, including for qualification as a Chartered Physicist (from 2001), Chartered Scientist (from 2004) and Chartered Engineer (from 2012).^[21][22][23]

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