Emergence of the doctor’s and master’s degrees and the licentiate

Emergence of the bachelor's degree[edit]

In the medieval European universities, candidates who had completed three or four years of study in the prescribed texts of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music), together known as the Liberal Arts and who had successfully passed examinations held by their master, would be admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts, from the Latin baccalaureus, a term previously used of a squire (i.e., apprentice) to a knight. Further study and in particular successful participation in and then moderating of disputations would earn one the Master of Arts degree, from the Latin magister, "master" (typically indicating a teacher), entitling one to teach these subjects. Masters of Arts were eligible to enter study under the "higher faculties" of Law, Medicine or Theology and earn first a bachelor's and then master or doctor's degrees in these subjects. Thus a degree was only a step on the way to becoming a fully qualified master – hence the English word "graduate", which is based on the Latin gradus ("step").