Postgraduate qualifications: what do they mean?

By Graham Trickey, Editor, Prospects.

As the number of people with degrees and postgraduate qualifications multiplies, the occasions when anyone with less than a doctorate can decently display their hard-earned qualifications dwindles. The days are gone when you could sign for a recorded delivery letter and add ‘BA, PGCert’ or ‘MTh’ after your name to impress the postman. Nevertheless the many different postgraduate abbreviations do have their uses and anyone interested in further study needs to know what sorts of courses some of these letters signify.

The Masters are the programmes with the widest spread of abbreviations, apart from the common MA and MSc. Widely recognised specialist Masters include the LLM for law, the MDS for dental surgery, the MBA for management and the MEd for education. Music, theology and literature also ring the changes. Another set of letters, CATS, is not a qualification but enables students to mix ’n’ match course modules through Credit Accumulation and Transfer Schemes.

Masters, although generally taught, tend to entail a substantial dissertation or project and can in some cases lead on to a research doctorate and more abbreviations. In the expanding Masters family the vocational courses are proliferating most rapidly, with awarded full-time business Masters (mainly an MSc) growing by 150% in the five years to 2001. A BSc Finance might explain how to pay for further study.

A not entirely walled-off category contains the diplomas and certificates such as the PGDip and PGCert, which are often taught conversion courses, taking students from one discipline into another in less than a year full-time. Diploma courses are generally longer than certificate programmes.

Although Dips and Certs are not higher degrees, in some cases students who successfully complete them can go straight on to complete a Masters. In other cases they may have to apply all over again. The most popular certificate is the PGCE, for would-be teachers - the ones who are resented because they all get money to study. Many of the diplomas and certificates, like the PGCE or in law the PgDL, have a vocational angle.

Another not always water-tight distinction separates off the postgraduate research programmes such as the PhD and DPhil. The shorter and less distinguished MPhil may involve a taught element as well as research, while a relatively new Masters, the MRes, teaches research to would-be research students. In more vocational areas like engineering and business studies, there can be taught doctorates to add further variety. Apart from the DEng, less common doctoral abbreviations include DSc, DLitt and LLD. The full-time doctorates take at least three years to complete while the MPhil takes a year minimum.

Unusually among the holders of postgraduate qualifications, those with PhDs and the like do still have a chance to let people know that they have been hard at study for years. But the problem for anyone using the title ‘doctor’ is that they can be called upon to apply tourniquets or deliver babies in emergencies. Although it won’t help the crisis in the health service, PhDs are expanding as a titled class faster even than life peers. With 14,000 doctorates being awarded in the UK every year, their status is being diluted all the time. A government target for the proportion of the population becoming PhDs could be the next logical step.

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