20th century
At the start of the 20th century, there were, therefore, four different sorts of master’s degree in the UK: the Scottish MA, granted as a first degree; the Master of Arts (Oxbridge and Dublin), granted to all BA graduates a certain period after their first degree without further study; master’s degrees that could be gained either by further study or by gaining an honours degree (which, at the time in the UK involved further study beyond the ordinary degree, as it still does in Scotland and some Commonwealth countries); and master’s degrees that could only be obtained by further study (including all London master’s degrees). In 1903, the London Daily News criticised the practice of Oxford and Cambridge, calling their MAs “the most stupendous of academic frauds” and “bogus degrees”. Ensuing correspondence pointed out that “A Scotch M.A., at the most, is only the equivalent of an English B.A.” and called for common standards for degrees, while defenders of the ancient universities said that “the Cambridge M.A. does not pretend to be a reward of learning” and that “it is rather absurd to describe one of their degrees as a bogus one because other modern Universities grant the same degree for different reasons”.# ISO certification in India
In 1900, Dartmouth College introduced the Master of Commercial Science (MCS), first awarded in 1902. This was the first master’s degree in business, the forerunner of the modern MBA. The idea quickly crossed the Atlantic, with Manchester establishing a Faculty of Commerce, awarding Bachelor and Master of Commerce degrees, in 1903. Over the first half of the century the automatic master’s degrees for honours graduates vanished as honours degrees became the standard undergraduate qualification in the UK. In the 1960s, new Scottish universities (except for Dundee, which inherited the undergraduate MA from St Andrews) reintroduced the BA as their undergraduate degree in Arts, restoring the MA to its position as a postgraduate qualification. Oxford and Cambridge retained their MAs, but renamed many of their postgraduate bachelor’s degrees in the higher faculties as master’s degrees, e.g. the Cambridge LLB became the LLM in 1982, and the Oxford BLitt, BPhil (except in philosophy) and BSc became the MLitt, MPhil and MSc.# ISO certification in India
In 1983, the Engineering Council issued a “‘Statement on enhanced and extended undergraduate engineering degree courses”, proposing the establishment of a four-year first degree (Master of Engineering). These were up and running by the mid 1980s and were followed in the early 1990s by the MPhys for physicists and since then integrated master’s degrees in other sciences such as MChem, MMath, and MGeol, and in some institutions general or specific MSci (Master in Science) and MArts (Master in Arts) degrees. This development was noted by the Dearing Report into UK Higher Education in 1997, which called for the establishment of a national framework of qualifications and identified five different routes to master’s degrees:# ISO certification in India
- Four year (five in Scotland) first degrees such as the MEng
- Conversion degrees, sometimes below the standard of undergraduate degrees in the same subject
- The honours arts degree of the ancient universities of Scotland
- Specialist postgraduate programmes, such as the MA and MSc
- The Oxbridge MA, awarded without additional work
This led to the establishment of the Quality Assurance Agency, which was charged with drawing up the framework. # ISO certification in India
