A degree is any of a wide range of status levels conferred by institutions of higher education, such as universities, normally as the result of successfully completing a program of study.

History

As with other professions, teaching in universities was only carried out by people who were properly qualified. In the same way that a carpenter would pass through the grades of apprentice and journeyman to attain the status of master carpenter when fully qualified by his guild, a teacher would become a master when he had been licensed by his profession, the teaching guild. These teaching guilds in various cities took on the identity "university" when granted a charter (by the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor in Europe's case), and students were admitted to the university and passed through its grades in ways directly analogous to those of the trade guilds.

Though higher education institutions date back to ancient times, such as Taxila and Nalanda in ancient India, the first higher education institutions to issue academic degrees (at all levels including bachelor, master and doctorate) were the medieval Madrasahs founded in the 9th century. The University of Al Karaouine in Fez, Morocco is thus recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest degree-granting university in the world with its founding in 859 by the princess Fatima al-Fihri. Also in the 9th century, Bimaristan medical schools were formed in the medieval Islamic world, where medical degrees and diplomas were issued to students of Islamic medicine who were qualified to be a practicing Doctor of Medicine. Al-Azhar University, founded in Cairo, Egypt in 975, was a Jami'ah ("university" in Arabic) which offered a variety of post-graduate degrees (Ijazah).

The origins of the doctorate in particular dates back to the ijazat attadris wa 'l-ifttd ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") in the medieval Islamic legal education system, which was equivalent to the Doctor of Laws qualification and was developed during the 9th century after the formation of the Madh'hab legal schools. To obtain a doctorate, a student "had to study in a guild school of law, usually four years for the basic undergraduate course" and at least ten years for a post-graduate course. The "doctorate was obtained after an oral examination to determine the originality of the candidate's theses", and to test the student's "ability to defend them against all objections, in disputations set up for the purpose" which were scholarly exercises practiced throughout the student's "career as a graduate student of law." After students completed their post-graduate education, they were awarded doctorates giving them the status of faqih (meaning "master of law"), mufti (meaning "professor of legal opinions") and mudarris (meaning "teacher"), which were later translated into Latin as magister, professor and doctor respectively.