Bachelor's Degree

Degree Classification in the UK

In the United Kingdom, bachelor's degrees can be awarded with or without Honours. Nowadays, nearly all candidates sit for honours; a Pass Degree (i.e. a bachelor's degree without honours) is usually awarded to a candidate who marginally fails the honours examination. A candidate who fails badly is usually allowed to retake the examination for a pass degree; most universities prohibit such a student from receiving honours.

In Oxford and Cambridge, honours classes properly apply to examinations, not to degrees. Thus, in Cambridge, where undergraduates are examined at the end of each Part, there is no established way of relating the honours classes for each Part of the Tripos to an overall honours class for the degree. In Oxford, the Final Honour School results are generally applied to the degree.

Honours are classified as follows:

• First Class Honours. In most universities, this is the highest honours which can be achieved, though some institutions award "starred firsts" to candidates of exceptional ability. A Double First correctly refers to first class honours in two separate subjects, e.g. Classics and Mathematics, and not to first class honours in the same subject in subsequent examinations, e.g. subsequent Parts of the Tripos in Cambridge.

• Second Class Honours. The bulk of university graduates fall into this class, which is sub-divided into
  • Upper Second (2:1) and
  • Lower Second (2:2). A 2:2 is usually the minimum standard required for postgraduate study and/or full membership of a professional body, though this depends greatly upon subject and institution: Nowadays, a candidate for a doctorate programme is usually required to have at least a 2:1, (or else a 2:2 plus a master's degree). A 2:2 is sometimes called a "Desmond" (cf. Archbishop Desmond Tutu).

• Third Class Honours. This is the lowest honours classification in most modern universities, though long before the subdivision of Second Class Honours the University of Oxford used to award Fourth Class Honours.

See also:

• Master's degree
• Doctorate
• Degrees of Oxford University