Talk:Undergraduate degree

Duplicative with article about academic degrees?

Do we need this article as well as academic degree? Loganberry (Talk) 09:51, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Possibly, possibly not. Academic degree is about degrees in general, whereas this is just about undergraduate. The term is certainly common enough (even if all undergraduate degrees are often mistakenly referred to as bachelor's degrees). There seems to be an article for every other type of degree, so why not? - Green Tentacle 10:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Undergraduate degree is a contradiction

Where and when did this splendidly idiotic phrase originate?

Until you graduate you do not have a degree, once you have one you are no longer an undergraduate.

First degree makes much more sense although bachelor's degree is less likely to be misinterpreted. --Kjwhitefoot 12:26, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Amen! 207.238.52.162 (talk) 15:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I always understood "undergraduate degree" to be a mis-nomer: students in a bachelors degree program are undergraduates until they graduate, at which point they are no longer undergraduates; they're now graduates, with a bachelors degree.

I know "undergraduate degree" is used frequently, presumably in contrast to "graduate degree" (which, in turn, should really be "post-graduate degree). Frequent usage aside, both both seem to be vague, especially compared to "bachelors degree" and "masters" or "doctorate" degree. (Of course, it does make sense to talk about "undergraduate students" and "graduate students.")

Could we re-write this article to explain that "undergraduate degree" is a misnomer?

Alternatively, what is the basis for the argument that "undergraduate degrees are often mistakingly referred to as bachelor's degrees"? Could it be that I have it backwards?

Thanks...

David Moloney 14:26, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Kjwhitefoot and David Moloney are right. Korky Day (talk) 21:10, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

It's not really that confusing; clearly it means "degree that undegraduate is aiming to graduate with". It's something of an etymological fallacy to pedantically insist that it's an oxymoron in the face of common usage... --86.135.176.173 (talk) 21:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The use is new, illogical, and not yet commonly accepted. Academics, in particular, are embarrassed by it. Are you telling them that they have no right to complain as long as people want to use such tortured language? That's not how language evolves. It evolves in a process which includes protests against irrationality. Sometimes logic wins. Anyway, we encyclopedia editors are merely documenting what's true and what's happening, not taking sides. Similarly, if the phrase "pre-marital conjugal sex" comes into use by illiterates, I'm going to describe its meaning honestly. Korky Day (talk) 19:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Linguistically, it makes perfect sense. 'Undergraduate degree' = 'a degree taken by an undergraduate'. Yes, this is different to a 'bachelor's degree' and 'master's degree', which describe the award gained at the end (so could be consider illogical by those standards), but it is linguistically correct.

Whether it is a new phrase or 'an embarrassment', I don't know. Personally, I've heard it used more than 'first degree' (which I've only ever heard used in American contexts). The most common phrase used in my experience is, in fact, just 'degree', which, of course, really refers to all sorts of different academic degrees. The next most common phrase is 'bachelor's degree'; however, not all undergraduate/first degrees are bachelor's degrees (as explained in the article).

I created this page way back in 2005 because there was no page to cover all degrees taken by undergraduates and 'undergraduate degree' was the title I chose. I have no objection to the page being at first degree just so long as 'undergraduate degree' and 'degree' are mentioned as alternatives, along with the fact that bachelor's degrees are the most common kinds. - Green Tentacle (talk) 22:47, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Linguistically, it does NOT make perfect sense. 'Undergraduate degree' is commonly used to mean 'a degree held by a FORMER undergraduate', i.e. a degree held by a graduate. This makes 'Undergraduate Degree' a misnomer when used to describe the degree held by a person who has previously graduated and is no longer an undergraduate. If it were called a graduate degree that would make perfect sense, and it would also fit perfectly with a post-graduate degree as the degree held by someone who has previously graduated.

Unfortunately the presence of 'Undergraduate Degree' on Wikipedia near the top of any search-engine search for this term just helps to perpetuate the use of this misnomer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.42.208.149 (talk) 16:33, 9 October 2018 (UTC)

I agree - perfectly logical. Let's change the name of the page to first degree or something since Green Tentacle has no objections then! Constantine^hehe 06:34, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

The article states that the phrase is colloquial, so why this phrase that belongs in urban dictionary is the title, rather than a mention of a misnomer regarding a college degree, is perplexing. 207.183.229.86 (talk) 19:40, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME. ElKevbo (talk) 12:33, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Spelling

I fixed the spelling of a few words in the United Kingdom section, although I am not 100% sure that they aren't just the British dialect of English way to spell them. I changed "programme", "programmes" and "enrol", to "program", "programs", and "enroll", respectively. Fireheat624 (talk) 23:49, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

South America section is off-topic

I find the 'South America' section to be terribly off topic. Someone decided to write huge paragraphs about general aspects of education in the region, but not related to the undergraduate degree.

Should we delete that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.143.63.7 (talk) 00:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)

Confusing

"The most common type of these undergraduate degrees are associate's degree and bachelor's degree."

This made me think that me having Bachelor's degree means that my education is "Undergraduate degree", not "Graduate degree" and i got in trouble because of this. (I am not native English speaker)Andrej7~enwiki (talk) 18:00, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was… no consensus to merge.

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Joyous! | Talk 03:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

subtle difference, missed by most readers -- degree is what you earn after completing an education program. plus, one article has 18 interlanguage-links and the other has only two, which indicates the two topics could be well covered in a common article. plus, postgraduate degree already redirects to postgraduate education. fgnievinski (talk) 19:57, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

I agree🤔 Sejrwikpedia0000 (talk) 05:16, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. The main article should be undergraduate education, but there's enough confusion on the terminology of degrees I think an article just on the name of the degree would be useful. The same confusion does not exist with the term "postgraduate degree". deisenbe (talk) 00:44, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

  I agree, but what do you mean by "I think an article just on the name of the degree would be useful"? Golden Freddy3124 (talk) 15:35, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. I think most readers can quite easily tell the difference between the concepts and terms. The number of inter-language links should not be relevant to merge decisions. Libcub (talk) 20:55, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.