A brief history of the ‘honorific’ Oxbridge M.A. degree

***In case you missed it, yesterday’s HEPI / UCAS webinar can be accessed here.***

This HEPI long read was authored by Dr Edward Hicks, who undertook a placement with HEPI during the General Election campaign. He usually works for the House of Commons, and has worked for three select committees as well as in the House of Commons Library.

When is a degree not a degree? The Master of Arts degree could fit the description. It comes in three types. The main type is the postgraduate qualification usually awarded after one year of study. The second type is the undergraduate qualification awarded by several Scottish universities following a four-year course. The third type is the degree awarded by the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and Trinity College, Dublin, which are effectively honorific degrees. Recipients have to be awarded a B.A. degree, which the M.A. degree will replace. Time has to have passed, a fee usually paid and the graduation process completed. But no essays or experiments need to be completed, no examinations sat, or dissertations submitted.

It would be easy to assume this is a permanent historical quirk dating back to the foundation of these universities, in the Middle Ages for Oxford and Cambridge, and 1592 for Trinity College, Dublin. But this would be incorrect. A little over four centuries ago it might still be expected that a student at each of these institutions would study and be assessed both for a 4-year B.A. degree and then a 3-year M.A. degree. So how did this change come about, how did these practices diverge so markedly from other universities in the UK and the Republic of Ireland and what does debate about their future tell us about the idea of university autonomy?

The medieval university degree can be conceived as modelled on the guild-style of training, where an apprentice would be trained up to a master level, before then taking on their own responsibility.[1] The structure evolved into one where students – usually arriving as young teenagers – would study for four years for a B.A. degree. They would then lecture the younger students for a year, as a condition of the degree. Three years after the B.A. they would, on completion of various exercises, be eligible for an M.A. degree. The length of the medieval courses at Oxford and Cambridge were increasingly longer than that at other European universities. For example, at Vienna only two years were prescribed for a B.A. and one year for an M.A.; at Freiburg only one and a half years for each.[2]

The model began to decline for various reasons. Teaching began to shift from the universities to the colleges. This weakened the link between what was taught and the assessment processes for degrees. From the sixteenth century, there were more students from wealthier backgrounds, less interested in formal academic study per se and more in the wider intellectual and cultural experience. These changes encouraged reductions in the residency requirement for the M.A. degree. For instance, in 1608 the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and the heads of Cambridge colleges agreed to remove the nine-term residency requirement imposed on B.A.s before they could take an M.A. degree. They argued this change reflected exemptions previously granted on an ad hoc basis and emphasised that students tended to serve as curates or schoolteachers to support themselves.[3] Formal requirements continued to be strenuous. At Trinity College, Dublin, founded in 1592, the early M.A. course involved attending lectures in political science and mathematics, disputations (a formalised style of debate) in mathematics and continual study of Greek and Hebrew.[4] At Oxford, the statutes laid down in 1636 required an oral examination for the M.A. degree in Astronomy, Geometry, Metaphysics, History, Greek, Hebrew and Natural Philosophy.

Yet over time the reality detached from the written regulations. Although nearly 40% of candidates at Oxford for an M.A. in 1793 to 1794 had resided for at least seven terms (there were in those days four terms per year) they tended to either hold college scholarships or be prospective clergymen preparing for ordination. Colleges did not offer any formal teaching to the students leading to the M.A. degree.[5] The degree examinations became a farce.[6] Richard Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin, former Provost of Oriel College, and reputed ancestor of Kevin Whately (star of the Oxford-set television series Morse and Lewis), told the 1850s University of Oxford Royal Commission that in his experience, no examiners were ever prepared to fail a candidate for an M.A. degree.[7]

Given the falling away of any actual studies or serious examination, why did the M.A. degree persist? Five potential reasons can be offered:

• First, there continued into the nineteenth century to be a lack of a proper evaluation for most students aiming for B.A. degrees. Only a minority took Honours degrees through examinations. Consequently, the lack of a rigorous examination for the M.A. degree would have looked less anomalous than it does now.
• Secondly, the M.A. degree played an important role in gaining entry to the privileges of the university. One was the ability to vote in Parliamentary elections. In 1832 it was reported there was a rush among Trinity College Dublin graduates to take their M.A. degrees to be eligible to vote.[8]
• Thirdly, holding an M.A. permitted graduates to be involved in the legislative life of the university. This was because holding an M.A. degree enabled Oxford graduates to vote in Convocation; and Trinity College and Cambridge graduates to vote in their Senates. At Oxford, the statutory reforms of Archbishop Laud in 1636 had permitted non-resident M.A.s to vote.[9] This reform was pregnant with consequences. The advances in technology, especially the growth of railways, meant that a formidable phalanx of non-resident M.A.s could be motivated and organised to come to vote down reforms proposed by resident academics. For example, the abolition of compulsory Ancient Greek as an entry requirement was proposed and rejected time and again.  
• Fourthly, holding an M.A. degree was often a requirement for holding certain external positions, such as being headmaster of grammar schools.
• Lastly, there was a financial incentive for the university and the colleges, who received fees paid by those wishing to take an M.A. degree.[10]

The impulse of reform which flowed over the old universities in the nineteenth century might have been thought to bring a revival of the M.A. degree. Indeed, when Oxford inaugurated the new Honours examination statute in 1800, attempts were also made to revive the examination for the M.A. degree, which should cover mathematics, physics, metaphysics, history, Hebrew, and ‘Elements of Religion, and the Doctrinal Articles [of the Church of England]’.[11] Seven years later this was silently abandoned.[12]

Proposals for reform continued to be made. In 1830 an attempt was made to make a modern history course a requirement of the Oxford Master of Arts course.[13] Outside of the universities, the drumbeat for university reform was steadily increasing and resulted in royal commissions into Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin, which reported in 1852 and 1853. Yet these struggled to figure out what to do with the moribund M.A. The Oxford Commission noted that there was a requirement for three weeks of residence for taking the M.A. degree. It proposed abolishing the residency requirement whilst suggesting reserving the degree for those who had either passed the Honours examination either in two subjects, or achieved the ‘higher Honours in one’.[14] The Cambridge Commission praised the M.A. degree as giving the majority of university members ‘a permanent connexion with it in its corporate capacity.’ It rejected making it more difficult or dependent on an examination, though it supported retaining a three-year interval between the B.A. and M.A. degrees.[15] By contrast, the Trinity College Dublin Commission in 1853 was more reform-minded. It noted the Provost (the head) of the college thought the ‘present mode of conferring the higher Degrees unseemly’. The Commission recommended reducing the time between degrees from three years to one, and requiring the candidate either ‘pursue some of the professional Courses of Study provided in the University, or else some advanced Course of Science or Literature’ which would be created.[16]

The only reform which was implemented was the abolition of the three-week residency requirement.[17] Whately expressed his surprise that the Oxford Commission

so readily acquiesce in the fraud (for it is no other) of the degrees of M.A., B.D., &c. It is the more fraud and the more a disgrace to the University, since at the London University M.A. does imply a severe examination.[18]

Subsequent commissions were strikingly silent on the subject, even whilst proposing far-reaching reforms to all three old universities. When Oxford and Cambridge developed postgraduate qualifications, they were either termed Bachelor of Science (BSc) and BLitt (Bachelor of Letters) or doctorates (initially DSc and DLitt followed in the First World War by the DPhil at Oxford and PhD at Cambridge as elsewhere in the UK).[19]

The new universities of the nineteenth century took different approaches. The earliest foundations, Durham and London Universities, founded in the 1830s, both introduced examinations for the M.A. degrees, a practice followed by Queen’s University in Ireland and later the University of Wales. However, this practice was not universal. When the federal Victoria University, ultimately including the university colleges of Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, was founded in 1880 it automatically awarded M.A.s to students with high achievements in Honours degrees. Following the break-up of Victoria University, its former constituent parts persisted in the practice – at the University of Leeds until 1907 and the University of Manchester until 1915. The University of Sheffield followed the practice, including for BSc recipients, until the 1930s.[20] Similarly, the University of Durham had instituted the practice of permitting students holding B.A. Honours degree, or who had secured certain further qualifications, to ‘be admissible to the degree of Master of Arts without further examinations or exercises’.[21] This practice persisted until 1922.[22] Similarly, in America, before the American Civil War, the M.A. degree was often considered an honorary award, or given to those engaging in literary activities.[23] Columbia University, for example, only introduced an examination for the M.A. degree in 1880.[24]

The linking of M.A. degrees to high achievements in Honours B.A. examinations was taken up at Oxford. This was part of attempts at reform in the Edwardian era. In 1907 a group of Oxford tutors published a lengthy article in The Times, which called for reforms which would include requiring candidates to be M.A.s to produce evidence of having ‘followed some course of advanced study in a higher Faculty extending over at least two years’ or followed ‘a course of training in educational method for at least one year’ along with being a teacher for a year. The candidate would then complete ‘exercises’, either at Oxford or another university.[25] In 1909 a proposal to limit the award of M.A. degrees to Oxford students achieving honours degrees (at a time when a reasonable proportion still took the less rigorous Pass degree) was defeated.[26] The reason for its defeat was articulated by the Chancellor of Oxford, Lord Curzon. He argued restricting the M.A. to those taking honours would either weaken the reputation of those taking Pass degrees or encourage the university to lower the standard for the Honours degrees to prevent a reduction in the numbers taking M.A. degrees ‘with a consequent loss to the revenues of the University.’ He argued limiting the M.A. degree to those with experience of teaching and research ‘would surely be regarded as an unduly narrow and almost pedantic restriction, and would defeat its own object’.[27]

The 1909 defeat paused attempts at internal reform. The Royal Commission into Oxford and Cambridge published in 1922 failed to recommend any reforms. Subsequent internal commissions at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1960s, designed to avoid a further royal commission, also avoided reform. The more public and comprehensive, the Oxford Franks Report, defended the existing arrangements in 1966: ‘because of its historical association with the constitution of the University’.[28]

In the meantime, many of the traditional reasons for taking M.A. degrees had begun to disappear. The Representation of the People Act 1918 extended the franchise in university constituencies to all graduates of the universities.[29] In the UK university constituencies were abolished in 1950. Trinity College, Dublin does retain representation in the Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Republic of Ireland’s legislature. The powers of the Oxford Convocation and Cambridge Senate were greatly lessened in the 1920s. Membership of the Oxford Convocation has now been extended to all graduates, who can vote in the election for the Chancellor and Professor of Poetry.[30] A Cambridge M.A. can participate in discussions, vote in elections for the University’s new Chancellor and the High Steward and borrow books from the University Library.[31] Trinity College M.A.s are members of the University’s Senate.[32]

The current regulations are laid out below: 

In the late 1990s, a new wave of reforms to higher education brought renewed debate over the M.A., at least at Oxford and Cambridge. In 1998 the newly formed Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) began work on devising a new framework for academic qualifications. It proposed abolishing the M.A. qualifications.[33] An editorial in The Times argued that such traditions represented ‘a safeguard for the future’ and would encourage alumni to donate to their old colleges.[34]. An ‘Early Day Motion’ was laid in the House of Commons by Jackie Lawrence, the Labour MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire. It criticised the practice of Oxbridge M.A. degrees. It was signed by 56 Labour MPs and two Liberal Democrat MPs.[35] The eventual QAA report in 2001 did state that the M.A. degrees at Oxford and Cambridge are not academic qualifications, with QAA reported as stating ‘The masters title is being used consistently across Europe to denote postgraduate achievement. The UK cannot afford to be left behind’.[36] But as the QAA framework did not bind existing degrees, no change was forthcoming.

In 2010 Dr Neil Dodgson, an academic at Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, publicly criticised the degree in the Cambridge University Regent House, calling it an ‘anomaly’ and a potential ‘PR disaster’.[37] The following year Chris Leslie, Labour backbench MP for Nottingham East, took action. On 15 February 2011, he brought forward a Ten-Minute Rule Bill. This enabled him to speak about the subject, albeit without any real prospect of his Bill progressing. In his speech Leslie

• Contrasted the £10 administration fee then charged by Oxford colleges with the average fee of £4,500 paid by students studying at other universities for a one-year taught Masters degree.
• Argued that the status quo ‘reinforces the suspicions of many of the privileges and advantages bestowed on a small number of very fortunate people.’
• Reference a QAA survey in 2000 that found 62% of employers ‘thought that MA (Oxon) and MA (Cantab) were genuinely earned postgraduate qualifications.’
• Cited replies to a survey he had sent to his constituents who had or had relatives with postgraduate qualifications and were aggrieved at the situation.
• Rejected the argument that Oxbridge graduates worked harder and had higher ability, noting such arguments tend to be made by Oxbridge graduates and ‘is obviously insulting to the other 100 universities in the UK’.[38]

On  21 October 2011 Leslie brought forward a Private Member’s Bill, the Master’s Degrees (Minimum Standards) Bill. The Bill was described as raising the question: ‘should some universities have the right to award a free master’s degree’. Leslie advanced six arguments against the status quo:

1. ‘They [Oxbridge M.A.s] undermine valid qualifications from other universities.’
2. ‘They entrench an artificial distinction between students and higher education institutions.’
3. ‘They confuse employers and create the risk that genuine achievements are misrepresented.’
4. ‘They confuse employers and create the risk that genuine achievements are misrepresented.’
5. ‘They demoralise those who spend years of their lives to achieve something that others get for nothing.’
6. ‘They risk devaluing the genuine calibre and reputation of British higher education’.[39]

He dismissed as ‘daft’ the possible alternative that all other universities should follow Oxford and Cambridge’s approach and convert B.A. degrees into M.A. degrees.[40]

Leslie’s Bill faced a procedural barrier in that government MPs could ‘talk it out’, by speaking until the end of the debate at 2.30pm, rather akin to panellists on Just Minute but with repetition and (some) hesitation. At that point the Bill would effectively fail. A lengthy speech opposing the Bill was given by David Nuttall, Conservative MP for Bury North, before Leslie’s Bill was supported by the Labour Shadow Minister for Competitiveness and Enterprise, Iain Wright. The final speech, expounding the then Government’s view, came from David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science. Willetts argued the M.A. was seen as enabling graduates to continue to be formally involved in the life of the university. He said that Leslie’s concerns about employers being confused had been addressed by subsequent publications by the QAA and by Oxford and Cambridge which had clarified on their websites that the M.A. was not a qualification for postgraduate study. He emphasised the importance of university autonomy, arguing the Bill would be ‘a significant step towards intervening in the internal arrangements of the universities in question’. Willetts also contended that ‘[p]art of respecting their autonomy is about respecting their history and traditions.’ His final remarks before the debate ended at 2.30pm was to argue the measure would need, for consistency, to also apply to the M.A. degree awarded as a first degree by Scottish universities.[41] Willetts was still speaking at 2.30pm meant that Leslie’s bill became ‘opposed’ and was unable to progress.

Amid the myriad challenges facing higher education, the Oxbridge M.A. is unlikely to be uttermost in the minds of any MPs. The updated February 2024 QAA Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications stated that the Oxford and Cambridge M.A. degrees ‘are not academic qualifications’.[42] At the same time, it is worth highlighting a few pertinent points that would-be reformers might wish to ponder:

• What should be the limits of university discretion over awarding degrees?
• Should Oxford and Cambridge be encouraged to convert their M.A. degrees into one-year Master’s degrees, as at other universities, or retire the title entirely to avoid confusion?
• What should happen to students with existing M.A. degrees?
• Can Trinity College, Dublin, be persuaded to give up its M.A. degree?
• Should similar reforms be applied to Scottish universities and their M.A. degrees?

[1] Gill Evans, Can a ‘degree’ hold its value, HEPI, 24 July 2024

[2] John M. Fletcher, ‘The Teaching of Arts at Oxford, 1400-1520’, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, Vol. 7, Issues 1-2 (1967), p. 421.

[3] ‘The sixteenth century’, A History of the County of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely: Volume 3, the City and University of Cambridge. (Originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1959)

[4] J. Luce, Trinity College Dublin: The First 400 Years (Dublin, Trinity College Dublin Press, 1992), p. 8.

[5] L. Sutherland, ‘The Curriculum’, in L. Sutherland and T. Aston (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford: Eighteenth Century (Oxford, OUP, 1986), pp. 483-486

[6] M. H. Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558-1642 (Oxford, OUP, 1959) p. 97

[7] Oxford University Commission, Report of her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State, Discipline, Studies, and Revenues of the University and Colleges of Oxford: together with the Evidence, and an Appendix, 1852, p. 25 [of the Evidence section].

[8] R. McDowell and D. Webb, Trinity College Dublin 1592-1952: An academic history (Cambridge, CUP, 1982), p. 99.

[9] Lawrence Brockliss, The University of Oxford: A History (Oxford, OUP, 2016) p. 149

[10] R. McDowell and D. Webb, Trinity College Dublin 1592-1952: An academic history (Cambridge, CUP, 1982), p. 99.

[11] V. Green, ‘Reformers and Reform in the University’, in L. Sutherland and T. Aston (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford: Eighteenth Century Oxford (Oxford, OUP, 1986), p. 626.

[12] Oxford University Commission, Report of her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State, Discipline, Studies, and Revenues of the University and Colleges of Oxford: together with the Evidence, and an Appendix (London, 1852), p. 83

[13] M. Brock, ‘The Oxford of Peel and Gladstone, 1800-1833’, in History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth Century Oxford, Part I (Oxford, OUP, 1997), p. 19

[14] Oxford University Commission, Report of her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State, Discipline, Studies, and Revenues of the University and Colleges of Oxford: together with the Evidence, and an Appendix, (London, 1852), p. 85

[15] Cambridge University Commission, Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners appointed to inquire into the State, Discipline, Studies, and Revenues of the University and Colleges of Cambridge; together with the Evidence, and an Appendix (London, 1852), p. 29.

[16] Royal Commission on the University of Dublin and Trinity College, Dublin, State, discipline, studies and revenues of the University of Dublin, and of Trinity College: report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners(Dublin, 1853), pp. 58-59.

[17] Renate Simpson, How the PhD came to Britain: A century of struggle for postgraduate education (Guildford, Society for Research into Higher Education, 1983), p. 25.

[18] Elizabeth Whately, Life and Correspondence of Richard Whatley, D.D., Late Archbishop of Dublin(2 vols., London, Longmans, Green and co., 1866), ii, p. 220

[19] Renate Simpson, How the PhD came to Britain: A century of struggle for postgraduate education (Guildford, Society for Research into Higher Education, 1983), pp. 59-60, 140, 147, 161

[20] Renate Simpson, How the PhD came to Britain: A century of struggle for postgraduate education (Guildford, Society for Research into Higher Education, 1983), p. 156.

[21] J. T Fowler, Durham University: Earlier Foundations and Present Colleges(London, 1904), p. 50

[22] Compare the regulations in Durham University Calendar with Almanack 1921-22(London, 1921) pp. 252-253 Durham University Calendar For the Year 1922-1923, (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1922), pp. 166-168

[23] Richard Hofstadter and C. DeWitt Hardy, The development and scope of higher education in the United States(Columbia University Press, New York, 1952), pp. 60-61.

[24] Columbia College, Statutes of Columbia College and Associated Schools, (New York, 1878), p. 29.

[25] ‘Oxford and the Nation’, The Times, 29 April 1907, p. 7.

[26] Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Principles & Methods of University Reform(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1909), p. 39

[27] Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Principles & Methods of University Reform(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1909), pp. 38-39.

[28] University of Oxford, Report of the Commission of Inquiry: Volume 1(Oxford, OUP, 1966),  p. 121 [para 265]

[29] Representation of the People Act 1918, Part I, section 2

[30] University of Oxford, Statute III: Convocation, accessed 23 July 2024

[31] University of Cambridge, The Cambridge MA, accessed 15 July 2024

[32] Trinity College University of Dublin, Calendar 2023-24: Degrees and Diplomas, p. 6.

[33] Anonymous, Education: Oxbridge MA degrees under threat, BBC News Website, 19 October 1999; Anonymous, Privilege Axed, The Oxford Student, 14 October 1999

[34] John O’Leary, ‘Who are the Oxbridge Masters now?’, The Times, 8 August 1998, p. 1; ‘Who are the masters now?’, The Times, 8 August 1998, p. 19.

[35] EDM 806, 6 June 2000

[36] John Clare, MA from Oxbridge is branded bogus, Daily Telegraph, 10 February 2001

[37] Report of Discussion, Cambridge University Reporter, 27 April 2010

[38] Hansard, 15 February 2011, cols. 825-6

[39] Hansard, 21 October 2011, cols. 1236-1237

[40] Hansard, 15 February 2011, col. 827

[41] Hansard, 21 October 2011, cols. 1244-1247

[42] Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, The Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications of UK Degree-Awarding (February 2024), p. 25