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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, October 1906

Notes on University Degrees

page 9

Notes on University Degrees.

1. Doctors and Masters

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the earliest of the universities appeared in Paris and Bologna, the terms doctor, master, and professor were synonymous. They all meant what the word professor means now, namely a teacher in a university. In Bologna the usual title was doctor, though professor and magister were also used. In. Paris, on the other hand, magister and professor were the common designations, doctor being employed chiefly in the faculty of law, in imitation of the usage of Bologna, the great school of law. In the course of time, however, these three terms became differentiated in meaning. Doctor and master came to be applied to those who were qualified and licensed to teach. in a university, whether they actually taught or not; that is to say, to those who had received what we now call a university degree. A distinction thus grew up between the doctores or magistri legentes (the reading, i.e. teaching doctors) and those who were non-legentes (namely graduates, qualified to teach, but not engaged in practice). The term professor, on the other hand, has remained exclusively applicable to the doctors or magistri legentes, save that in modern and more civilised times the title is also claimed by dancing masters and other persons of the baser sort.

A further distinction has grown up between the terms doctor and master themselves. Doctor came to be reserved in England for the higher faculties, namely theology, law, and medicine; while master was used as the corresponding title in the lower faculty of arts. This distinction, however, is not universal; for in Germany the graduate in arts is called doctor of philosophy, instead of, as in England, master of arts. In recent years we have seen introduced into the universities both of England and the colonies the historical absurdity of a master's and a doctor's degree granted as two different orders of merit in the same faculty. Thus we have the degree of LL.M. as well as that of LL.D., a distinction based on the historical error that the degree of doctor is superior to that of master. It is true that in old days, as well as now, the degree of LL.D. was superior to that of M.A.; but this was due to the superiority of the faculty of law over that of arts, and not to any difference between a doctor as such and a master as such.

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2. Bachelors

Bachelor, as the title of a graduate, is of later origin than doctor or master. Originally it had nothing to do with Universities, but is said to be derived from the Low Latin baccalarias, a cow-herd or farm servant. However this may be, the term came to mean (1) generically, a young man (whence the popular meaning of the word), (2) specifically, an apprentice or probationer (e.g. a monk or a knight in the probationary stage—knight bachelor) (3) a probationer in the profession of a university teacher, i.e. a student who is not yet a doctor or master, but who has received a limited and provisional license to teach by way of apprenticeship, preliminary to his complete reception into the teaching profession. The practice of granting such licenses to bachelors seems to have begun in Paris in the thirteenth century, and to have spread thence to the English Universities. It is to be regretted that so many students forget that a bachelor's degree is merely a preliminary step towards complete academic status, and act as if it were the genuine crown and garland of the race that is set before them.

3. Graduation

Taking a university degree—graduation—meant originally the act of being received as a member of the university, i.e. of the incorporated body, guild, or union of academic teachers (doctores, projessores, mayistri). The tei in university is derived from universitas, which meant in Roman law any kind of corporation. In the original sense, therefore, a joint-stock company, or the city of Wellington, or the Bank of New Zealand is as much entitled to be called a university as the University of Oxford is. For many a day, however, the term has been limited to one particular kind of corporation, namely the corporate union of the academic teachers and graduates of a certain place. When, in the Middle Ages, professors, graduates, or students spoke of the university, they naturally meant the university (i.e. corporation) to which they themselves belonged. So in modern times when the citizens of a town speak of the corporation, they mean the corporation of which they themselves are members, namely the municipal corporation of their own town. Just as the term corporation is tending to become limited to municipal corporations, so the term university has become limited to academic corporations. A. similar process of specification, though not so complete, has affected the related term college. Collegium in Latin is any body corporate; college in English means commonly a teaching page 11 institution, though not necessarily or commonly of university rank. So naturally, indeed, does the word college now suggest a boys' or girls' school, that it is a matter of regret that Victoria College suffered at its birth or baptism the misfortune of so misleading and unworthy a title. Even Victoria University College would have been a great improvement, while the University of Wellington would have been a choice justified by the example of the University of Otago and also as a premonition of the future.

A University, then, was originally a voluntary union or guild of masters, doctors, or professors engaged in academic teaching in some city such as Paris, Bologna, or Oxford. It was a self-governing body with the power of admitting new members and authorising them to take part in its academic work. This admission into the universitas—into the teacher's guild—of a new master or doctor was graduation, the taking of a degree. Afterwards, however, when the distinction arose between doctores legentes and doctores non-legentes—between professors and graduates—graduation necessarily assumed a new meaning. It became what it is now, namely the public and authoritative recognition of expert qualification in some branch of knowledge.

4. Matriculation

In addition to this guild or union of doctors and masters into which graduates were received, there was also a guild or union of students, a voluntary association established by the students themselves for their protection, assistance, and government. The reception of a new member into this students' union was called matriculation, and corresponded to the reception of a graduate into the doctors' union. These two bodies—the professorial board and the students' association—working together sometimes in concord and often without it—constitute the primitive elements of the University. Governing bodies superior to them both, such as councils and senates, are a later innovation, by reason of which we have fallen away from the glorious liberty which our forefathers achieved and handed down to us.

5. The Capping Ceremony.

The ceremony of graduation is still called in New Zealand, in imitation of Scottish usage, and in remembrance of medieval practice, the capping ceremony; although there is no longer any capping and often very little ceremony. It consisted originally page 12 in the public initiation of a new doctor, master, or professor—his formal entrance upon the duties of his new office. It may be said to have consisted of four parts, the first of which was the formal granting of a license to teach in some particular faculty, i.e. formal admission as a master of the University. The form of admission of graduates in Oxford is worded to this day as a license to teach. Secondly, the new graduate is publicly presented or invested with the insignia of his office, namely a ring, a book, a chair, and a cap. The ring and the book have disappeared. The chair is still remembered in the customary mode of speech by which we term the professorship of law or of Latin the chair of law or Latin; but in standing up to lecture the modern professor has grievously departed from the more luxurious and dignified habit of his predecessors. The cap was the square biretta, which in a more or less modified form is still a familiar feature of academic costume. It was the recognised badge of an academic teacher. The third part of the capping ceremony was an inaugural lecture delivered by the new candidate—this being the public commencement of his duties. To this day in Scotland when a new judge is appointed, the ceremony of his elevation to the bench includes the trial of a case and a judgment delivered by him in the presence of his colleagues. The fourth and last part of the capping ceremony was a banquet, at which the new member of the University entertained his colleagues. In New Zealand the banquet still exists, but by some strange transformation the new graduates are the guests instead of the hosts.

6. Arts

The term arts in the phrases master of arts, faculty of arts, etc., is an abbreviation of liberal arts. Arts in the generic sense meant sciences, departments of knowledge, the Latin ars being the equivalent of scientia. The artes liberales (originally so called as being those which were worthy of free men) were those sciences which were the appropriate subject-matter of a general education, as opposed to those which pertained to particular learned professions, namely law, medicine, and theology. These liberal arts were seven in number, viz. grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Grammar meant in reality the study of the Latin language; we can hear a reminder of this usage in the grammar schools of England. Logic included philosophy, it being through logic that the mediæval mind found its way into the mysteries of metaphysics. This second of the liberal arts, therefore, may be said to correspond to what we in New Zealand unfortunately choose to call mental page 13 science—a term which suggests either the study of lunacy in general, or of that particular branch of it known as faith-healing. Just as the term art thus came to be limited to the liberal as as opposed to the technical arts, so the term science tends in modern times to be appropriated for the exclusive use of the physical sciences.

7. Laws

The laws referred to in the phrases doctor of laws, bachelor of laws, etc. are the leges—the rules contained in the compilation of Roman law made by order of the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, and studied at Bologna and elsewhere through-out the Middle Ages as the living law of Europe. LL.D. is the exact equivalent of D.C.L.; the doctor of laws is the doctor of civil law, the teacher of the laws of Rome. He once had a colleague almost as important as himself, namely the doctor of canon law, for the civil and the canon law were in the Middle Ages the two systems by which the world was governed.

It ought not to be necessary to remind lawyers—yet it may be done for safety's sake—that the doubled consonant in LL.B. is merely the sign of the plural, and that the two first letters are not independent initials. Yet I have known bachelors of laws who wrote themselves down L.L.B., and even a doctor of laws (honoris causa) whose serenity was unruffled by L.L.D.

It has been the evil and undeserved fate of the degree of doctor of laws to be used for purely honorary and decorative purposes—as a token of respect rather than as a genuine certificate of learning. Just as the degree of doctor of divinity is sometimes given honoris causa to men who know but little theology, so the degree of doctor of laws is often conferred for the same reason on men who know no law at all.

8. Degrees by Royal Charter

It was the custom in the Middle Ages for a university to apply for a bull, charter, or other act of recognition from the Pope or Emperor. This was reputed to give some sort of international validity to the degrees granted by the university. The master or doctor of a university so recognised by papal or imperial authority had or was reputed to have the jus ubique docendi, the right of teaching anywhere throughout Christendom, and not merely within the jurisdiction of his own alma mater. This universal recognition was, however, more a name than a reality, and must then, as now, have been a matter lying wholly in the discretion of those from whom it was sought.

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We no longer seek bulls from Rome, nor is there any longer any emperor from whom we can seek imperial authority, but it is still the custom to seek and obtain royal charters for the granting of degrees. Whatever possible effect the possession of such a charter may have upon the prestige of a university, it is not easy to see that it has any legal consequence at all, or is anything more than a form or ceremony inherited from mediæval practice. The only authority which the University of New Zealand requires for the granting of a degree is that of the New Zealand Parliament; nor can a royal charter affect in any way the operation of the degree so given. The recognition of a degree outside the colony in which it is obtained is entirely optional on the part of the recognising bodies; and it does not seem that American degrees, which are given without the sanction of any royal charter, stand in any different legal position in England from that of New Zealand degrees, to which that sanction belongs.

9. Degree Examinations

Some idea of the standard of discipline and learning demanded by mediæval universities may perhaps be gathered from the following statistics of the University of Vienna. In a certain year there were 43 candidates, of whom 17 failed. Of these one failed for speaking rudely to a master, one for irregularities in the matter of academic dress, one for gambling, one for going about disguised, one for fighting with knives against certain tailors, one for going out in the middle of the examination to see an execution, but none for failure to show the required amount of scholarship. It does not appear, however, whether this was due to the learning of the candidates or to the leniency of the examiners.

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