A Bachelor of Arts is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts and sciences. A Bachelor of Arts is generally completed in three or four years, depending on the country and institution.
In colleges and universities in Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, and South Africa, the BA degree can be taken over three years of full-time study. Students must pursue at least one major area of study and units from that subject are usually studied in each year, though sometimes students may choose to complete upper-level classes in the same year and as a result, can leave space for elective subjects from a different field. At some universities, students may choose to pursue a second major; alternatively, the remainder of the degree is taken up with a minor area of study and other individual or stream-based subjects. Education in Canada is controlled by the provinces and can be very different depending on the province. Canadian universities typically offer four-year Bachelor of Arts degrees. In many universities and colleges, Bachelor of Arts degrees are differentiated either as BA or as honours BA degrees. Honours is an academic distinction indicating that a student achieved his or her BA degree with a sufficiently high overall grade point average; in addition, some programs may require more education than non-honours programs.
In the Netherlands, the BA and Master of Arts degrees were introduced in 2002. Until then, a single program led to the doctorandus degree, which comprised the same course load as the bachelor's and master's programs combined. The title doctorandus was used in almost all fields of study; other titles were used for legal studies and engineering. Those who had already started the doctorandus program could, on completing it, opt for the doctorandus degree or could use the master's degree in accordance with the new standard.
Germany
In Germany, university-level education usually happens in either a Universität or a Fachhochschule ; both can be referred to as a Hochschule, which is the generic term in Germany for all institutions awarding academic degrees. Fachhochschule is often translated as "University of Applied Sciences". Universitäten place greater emphasis on fundamental science and theoretical background, while Fachhochschulen are generally designed with a focus on teaching professional skills. Degrees earned at Universitäten and Fachhochschulen are legally equivalent. In Germany, the B.A. normally lasts between three and three and a half years – six or seven semesters – and is awarded after the student earns between 180 and 210 ECTS.
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the first degree course normally lasts three years, but nomenclature varies: 19th-century and later universities usually distinguish between arts and sciences subjects by awarding either a B.A. or B.Sc. degree. However, some older or ancient universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin traditionally award B.A.s to undergraduates having completed the final examinations, e.g. Part IITripos, Final Honour Schools, Moderatorship, in most subjects including the sciences. Some new plate glass universities established in the 1960s, such as York and Lancaster originally followed the practice of Oxford and Cambridge by awarding B.A.s in all subjects, but have since changed to awarding B.Sc. degrees in science subjects. At Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin the degree of M.A. can be claimed, usually twenty-one terms after matriculation. For many centuries, the bachelor's degree was an intermediate step and was awarded for much of the work carried out in later times at secondary schools. The names of the final secondary school exams in France and Spain come from this: le Baccalauréat and el Bachillerato, respectively. The Ancient Universities of Scotland award a Master of Arts degree to humanities or arts graduates, but a B.Sc. to science graduates. This course takes four years for an honours degree and three for an ordinary. In Scotland, it is possible to opt to take an ordinary degree rather than this simply ranking below a third class honours. A Bachelor of Arts is entitled to the designation B.A. for an ordinary/pass degree and B.A. for an honours degree. Students who completed an honours B.A. sometimes style themselves by or after the degree abbreviation in parentheses. An honours degree is always awarded in one of four classes depending upon the marks gained in the final assessments and examinations. The top students are awarded a first-class degree, followed by an upper second-class degree, a lower second-class degree, and those with the lowest marks gain a third-class degree. An ordinary or unclassified degree may be awarded if a student has completed the full honours degree course but has not obtained the total required passes sufficient to merit a third-class honours degree. Typically these degrees lack the final year requirement of a dissertation.
