The Structure and Content of the Bachelor Degree Course in British Higher Education

With Special Reference to Literae Humaniores in the Late Nineteenth Century Oxford

Abstract

　 The fundamental structure of a bachelor degree course (unergraduate honour course) in British higher education was shaped when the Honours Examination System was introduced in the early nineteenth century Oxford. In Oxford, after the first honour course in Literae Humaniores (Greats) established in 1802, mathematics (1807), natural sciences (1850), law and modern history (1850), theology (1870), jurisprudence (1872), modern history (1872), and oriental studies followed suit. This practice was also brought into the newly founded colleges and universities. Thus the pattern of three or four year’s study of a single subject, culminating in a series of three-hour written examinations and a published class list, became an established institution in many English universities during the twentieth century.

　 How is a bachelor degree course or programme constructed in the British higher education? What are its contents? How does a student proceed to an avenue to a bachelor degree? In this paper these questions are asked and clarified through the case study of Literae Humaniores, the first, defining and well-known honour course in Oxford at the time of 1892 when the prestige and popularity of the Greats was at its height. At the same time the meaning and the characteristic feature of an English liberal education will be sought after in the course of consideration.