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Bach­e­lor or Bach­e­lor’s? Bach­e­lor’s or Bach­e­lors? Well, it depends on what or in some cas­es who you are speak­ing of! Let’s dive a lit­tle deeper.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in July 2023 and was updat­ed in Jan­u­ary 2024.

Learn­ing the lin­go and gram­mar for talk­ing about aca­d­e­m­ic degrees can be tricky. Many face the prob­lem of pick­ing between “bach­e­lors” and “bach­e­lor’s” when describ­ing their under­grad program. 

Even after actu­al­ly earn­ing the degree, you may be stumped. Well, the cor­rect term to write or speak would be “bach­e­lor’s.” The plur­al form of bach­e­lors is only applic­a­ble when you’re talk­ing about a group of grad­u­ates who have fin­ished their degree. In anoth­er con­text, bach­e­lors could also describe eli­gi­ble, unmar­ried men look­ing for love. When­ev­er you’re refer­ring to a gen­er­al under­grad­u­ate degree, bach­e­lor’s is the right term.

Check out the top bach­e­lor’s degree pro­grams in our rank­ings. Have an asso­ciate degree? Check out degree-com­ple­tion pro­grams.

Why is “Bachelor’s Degree” Correct?

bachelor or bachelor's

Accord­ing to Asso­ci­at­ed Press Style and Chica­go Man­u­al guide­lines, using the low­er­case form with an apos­tro­phe for bach­e­lor’s degree is prop­er English. 

The term must sug­gest pos­ses­sion because the degree belongs as prop­er­ty to a stu­dent. The degree belongs to you. In cas­es where bach­e­lor’s degree is too long, in gen­er­al terms bach­e­lor’s is sufficient. 

Let’s clear up any mis­un­der­stand­ing with some exam­ples. Here are some gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect sen­tences (punc­tu­a­tion marks matter!):

  • Sophie is fin­ish­ing her senior the­sis for a bachelor’s.
  • Ralph has earned two bach­e­lor’s degrees in social sciences.
  • Car­men grad­u­at­ed with her bach­e­lor’s in only three years.
  • Hav­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree pre­pared me for the workforce.

Writ­ing that some­one holds a bach­e­lor’s degree is appro­pri­ate for estab­lish­ing their cre­den­tials. AP Style and the Chica­go Man­u­al pre­fer using this gener­ic phrase rather than list­ing the degree’s full name. The same holds true for a mas­ter’s degree. 

Grad­u­ate schools offer mas­ter’s, not mas­ters degree pro­grams. Again the apos­tro­phe helps dis­play how stu­dents pos­sess the degree. How­ev­er, please note that two-year under­grad­u­ate pro­grams hold the excep­tion. Say­ing asso­ciate degree (the low­est degree) is cor­rect here.

Where Does the Term “Bachelor’s” Degree Come From?

The use of the word bach­e­lor for an advanced edu­ca­tion­al degree is a dis­tor­tion of the word “bac­calar­ius”. Its ori­gins are in medieval Latin. The word bach­e­lor has been in use since at least the 12th cen­tu­ry. It has evolved over time to its cur­rent use for describ­ing four-year aca­d­e­m­ic degrees earned from a university. 

It’s one of those words that has been strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the male gen­der since its ori­gins. How­ev­er, the word has evolved to become an almost gener­ic term for any­one who’s earned a four-year degree from a uni­ver­si­ty. Many, but not all, pro­fes­sion­al fields expect to see a bach­e­lor’s degree in a rel­e­vant field list­ed on an appli­can­t’s resume, fur­ther dilut­ing the gen­der speci­fici­ty of the word bachelor.

The Term “Bachelor’s” in the 1100s

The exact time peri­od for the ori­gin of the word bach­e­lor isn’t known. How­ev­er, it’s accept­ed that it came into com­mon use in the 1100s and start­ed some­where in Europe, pos­si­bly France. It was used dur­ing the height of the feu­dal sys­tem to describe some­one who was of low rank inside a giv­en hier­ar­chy. A sin­gle male with lit­tle to no wealth or pos­ses­sions who was start­ing out in a pro­fes­sion was called a bachelor. 

The demands of the pro­fes­sion meant that there was no time to find a wife. The man stayed sin­gle until he was able to rise up the ranks in a guild or knight­hood and have more spare time. Its use did­n’t cross over to scholas­tic endeav­ors until the 13th cen­tu­ry and was still pri­mar­i­ly in use in Europe.

The Use of the Word “Bachelor’s” in the 1300s

Some­where around 1300, the use of bach­e­lor as a word to describe knights of low rank crossed over the Eng­lish Chan­nel and into the lex­i­con of British speak­ers. How­ev­er, France was ahead of Britain in using the word in the 1200s to denote some­one pur­su­ing their under­grad­u­ate studies. 

The use of the word bach­e­lor was accept­ed for describ­ing a sin­gle man who was in the ear­ly years of learn­ing their pro­fes­sion. It also was used in describ­ing a stu­dent who was begin­ning their under­grad­u­ate stud­ies. A stu­dent who earned their bac­calau­re­ate degree would then move on to earn their mas­ter’s degree and show the world at large that they had mas­tery in their cho­sen profession.

“Bachelor’s” Use in the Victorian Era

It was­n’t until the Vic­to­ri­an era of the mid-to-late 1800s that the word was pur­loined for use as a gener­ic term for an unmar­ried man. In fact, the word gained a bit of a racy con­no­ta­tion because an unmar­ried man who was con­sid­ered eli­gi­ble for mar­riage was some­times seen as some­thing of a rake. 

What is a rake? A rake is a man who is thought to be a wom­an­iz­er and has ques­tion­able morals.

To put that in mod­ern terms, a bach­e­lor could court as many ladies as he liked at once with­out much dis­ap­proval from polite soci­ety. It was assumed he’d even­tu­al­ly give up his rak­ish ways and set­tle down in marriage.

Bach­e­lor’s degrees are still described as bac­calau­re­ate degrees, but the use of this word is sec­ondary to bach­e­lor’s. More spe­cif­ic terms like “bach­e­lor of sci­ence” describe the type of degree. The use of the word bach­e­lor’s for aca­d­e­m­ic degrees has been in place for hun­dreds of years. 

It’s used to describe under­grad­u­ate degrees around the world. The orig­i­nal “low” use of the word makes for an inter­est­ing con­trast when con­sid­er­ing the mod­ern-day impor­tance of earn­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree.

How Did a Bachelor’s Degree Become So Important?

bachelor's degree in important

The professional/corporate fields bear most of the respon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree a require­ment for employment. 

The impor­tance of hav­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree for pro­fes­sion­al employ­ment has been on the rise since the late 1980s and has become wide­spread due to var­i­ous influ­ences, per­cep­tions, and even changes in the law that require a bach­e­lor’s degree for licensure. 

Is a Bachelor’s Degree a Requirement to Success?

Some pro­fes­sions have always required a bach­e­lor’s degree and were dif­fi­cult to get into with­out pri­or edu­ca­tion, even an asso­ciate degree. Now many pro­fes­sions have decid­ed they require a bach­e­lor’s degree to shift the bur­den and cost of train­ing onto the student/future employ­ee. (Note that an aca­d­e­m­ic degree like biol­o­gy is some­what dif­fer­ent from a pro­fes­sion­al degree like pub­lic administration.)

Many pro­fes­sions, such as com­put­er sci­ence, engi­neer­ing, med­i­cine, law, edu­ca­tion, and account­ing have his­tor­i­cal­ly required peo­ple to under­go edu­ca­tion or exten­sive train­ing process­es pri­or to being allowed to enter their field at the low­er lev­els of employ­ment, such as busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion degree, bach­e­lor of arts, or bach­e­lor of science. 

Starting From the Bottom and Climbing Your Way to the Top

Oth­er white-col­lar pro­fes­sions would start promis­ing junior mem­bers in posi­tions such as the mail­room and let them observe how the job was done as they did their rounds. 

The trope of start­ing pro­fes­sion­al employ­ment in the typ­ing pool or mail­room is based in fact and was the result of employ­ers hav­ing a will­ing­ness to edu­cate their employ­ees inter­nal­ly instead of expect­ing them to go to school right away. 

Some­times an employ­ee had a degree but still had to start in the mail­room to prove them­selves. Degree pro­grams took the place of that on-the-job training.

As the 20th Cen­tu­ry drew to a close, employ­ers start­ed to see the ben­e­fits of hir­ing employ­ees with bach­e­lor’s degrees in a giv­en field. There was less time spent in train­ing because a bach­e­lor’s degree denot­ed intel­li­gence and capa­bil­i­ty. Employ­ers had to spend less time and mon­ey in train­ing an employ­ee to inter­nal stan­dards and practices. 

Sometimes a Bachelor’s Degree is the Only Way

They also found they were able to attract the best tal­ent by select­ing can­di­dates with a bach­e­lor’s degree. Now, of course, that has shift­ed to the mas­ter’s degree and the bach­e­lor’s is stan­dard. Get­ting a grad­u­ate degree sets you apart. Typ­i­cal­ly a bach­e­lor’s degree takes four years, while mas­ter’s degrees take 2 to 3 years. Four-year degrees are seen as high­er than asso­ci­ate’s or applied sci­ence degrees.

The K‑12 edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem is anoth­er source of empha­sis on earn­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree. Par­ents put extra­or­di­nary effort into get­ting their chil­dren into the best schools to give them a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage when it comes to apply­ing to the best universities. 

Stu­dents who can gain access to pres­ti­gious schools and grad­u­ate with a bach­e­lors are poised to reap the ben­e­fits of the alum­ni net­work and name recog­ni­tion by employ­ers. It’s nat­ur­al for par­ents to want the best for their kids, and that now includes get­ting a bach­e­lor’s degree at the very least in a high-pay­ing field. And then, often, mov­ing on to a mas­ter’s degree or doc­tor­al degree. 

Obvi­ous­ly, some jobs require a doc­tor­ate or doc­tor­al degree to begin with. Doc­tor­ate degrees are becom­ing com­mon in all fields, even busi­ness, where doc­tor­al degrees were once unheard of.

Pressure to Obtain a Bachelor’s Degree

The school sys­tems also put a lot of pres­sure on stu­dents to earn the best pos­si­ble grades in order to get accept­ed into pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties. School dis­tricts that can get stu­dents into the best col­leges ben­e­fit in the form of an improved rep­u­ta­tion that attracts fam­i­lies who want the best edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren. Ulti­mate­ly, stu­dents face a lot of pres­sure to per­form, get a high grade point aver­age, grad­u­ate sum­ma cum laude, and make them­selves sound appeal­ing to the col­leges of their choice.

Today, whether you’re get­ting a lib­er­al arts or health­care degree, a BA or BS degree, your pos­si­ble career paths and earn­ing poten­tial are at stake. Many stu­dents choose a field of study after their gen­er­al edu­ca­tion with­out con­sid­er­ing soft skills like crit­i­cal thinking. 

There are many types of bach­e­lor’s degrees, and not all are bet­ter than a high school diplo­ma. Your course­work is only part of get­ting a degree — a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege is as good as a uni­ver­si­ty for that. Mak­ing your­self hire­able is the real skill.

Should Bachelor’s Degree Be Capitalized?

bachelor's degree capitalized

Accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press Style­book and the Chica­go Man­u­al, the word bach­e­lor is cap­i­tal­ized and not cap­i­tal­ized depend­ing on its use. 

You don’t cap­i­tal­ize the word when you’re using the word in a gen­er­al sense for gen­er­al ref­er­ences. That’s true of all the degrees. For exam­ple, the sen­tence “Jane went to Smith Uni­ver­si­ty to get her bach­e­lor’s degree” uses the word as a gen­er­al­i­ty. There’s noth­ing that spec­i­fies the major she’s pur­su­ing, or if it’s an art or bach­e­lor of sci­ence degree. The low­er case is also appro­pri­ate when the word is used on its own. 

Bach­e­lor’s is cap­i­tal­ized when used to spec­i­fy the full name of a degree. That means you type out Bach­e­lor of Arts, Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts, or Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Nurs­ing with upper case let­ters since it’s a spe­cif­ic degree. Abbre­vi­ate degrees log­i­cal­ly: BA, BS, BSN, BBA, etc.

Anoth­er fre­quent­ly asked ques­tion involves the use of punc­tu­a­tion. That is, is it a bach­e­lor’s or bach­e­lors degree? Or is it bach­e­lor or bach­e­lor’s degree? Your spellcheck­er prob­a­bly throws a fit when­ev­er you try to use one or the oth­er, which can make you won­der if you’ve got the right use of the word in the first place. 

The apos­tro­phe is used when say­ing some­thing like “I have a bach­e­lor’s degree in sci­ence”. This is telling the read­er that you are in pos­ses­sion of a bach­e­lor’s degree (rather than a bach­e­lors degree). How­ev­er, if you say that you have a Bach­e­lor of Arts, you don’t use the apos­tro­phe at all, much less an s.

Is “Bachelor’s” Gender-Specific?

Only in the strictest sense of the word and its use. If you’re using it to refer to a sin­gle man, the word is gen­der-spe­cif­ic. It’s also gen­der-spe­cif­ic when looked at from a his­tor­i­cal point of view, as col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties were attend­ed pri­mar­i­ly by men for centuries. 

It was­n’t until the 1800s that women start­ed to be accept­ed into high­er edu­ca­tion for pro­fes­sions oth­er than teach­ing and nurs­ing, and women did­n’t typ­i­cal­ly pur­sue bach­e­lor’s degrees in large amounts until the 20th Cen­tu­ry. Women now make up more than half of all stu­dents earn­ing bach­e­lor’s degrees in the U.S., but this has only been true for the last 40 years.

Chang­ing the use of the word bach­e­lor’s to describe an under­grad­u­ate degree to some­thing more gen­der-neu­tral may nev­er hap­pen. Mil­lions of women have earned their bach­e­lor’s degrees which has result­ed in a kind of neu­tral­iz­ing of the use of the word. 

Times Have Changed for Women Obtaining Bachelor’s Degrees

Soci­ety at large rec­og­nizes what some­one means when they say they’ve earned a bach­e­lor’s degree at X uni­ver­si­ty or col­lege, and noth­ing fur­ther is thought about the fact that a woman has earned a bach­e­lor’s. Instead of being a gen­der-spe­cif­ic descrip­tion, it has become a neu­tral way to describe a four-year degree.

bachelor or bachelor's

Earn­ing a bach­e­lor’s degree is a major mile­stone in life, and mil­lions of peo­ple have walked the stage to take their degrees and hold their heads high. To take issue with a gen­der des­ig­na­tion for a degree only dimin­ish­es the years of effort a stu­dent has put into earn­ing a high­er education. 

The use of the word bach­e­lor to describe a degree is used in uni­ver­si­ties around the world and is high­ly estab­lished as a descrip­tion, and almost no one thinks of some­one who holds a bach­e­lor’s degree to be of any oth­er gen­der than the one they present as.

When Should “Bachelor” Be Used?

Most writ­ing experts agree there’s one case where you should use the sin­gu­lar form of bach­e­lor. This comes when you’re talk­ing about a spe­cif­ic degree grant­ed by a col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty, like a bach­e­lor of arts or bach­e­lor of sci­ence degree. 

A Bach­e­lor of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree, for instance, is its own degree type. Since it’s a degree’s full title, the word must be cap­i­tal­ized like a for­mal title. Avoid adding an apos­tro­phe here. Cap­i­tal­ize only the offi­cial degree title but not the major. 

Eng­lish is the excep­tion because it’s a lan­guage and prop­er noun. So not “bach­e­lor degree” but a “bach­e­lor’s degree.” Review the fol­low­ing accu­rate exam­ples for clarification:

  • Tem­ple Uni­ver­si­ty offers a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence degree in biophysics.
  • Dante is pur­su­ing a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree in Eng­lish to become an author.
  • I began my act­ing career with a Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts degree in drama.
  • Rachel and Melis­sa are grad­u­at­ing with Bach­e­lor of Social Work degrees after their asso­ciate degrees.

Does Anyone Even Use “Baccalaureate”?

There’s no dif­fer­ence between say­ing bac­calau­re­ate and bach­e­lor’s degree. Both terms refer to the low­est aca­d­e­m­ic degree grant­ed at the uni­ver­si­ty lev­el. Bac­calau­re­ate is the orig­i­nal name first used in the mid-17th cen­tu­ry when high­er edu­ca­tion pros­pered. It’s derived from the medieval Latin word “bac­calau­reus.”

In the Unit­ed King­dom, a bac­calau­re­ate can also be an exam­i­na­tion giv­en as a school per­for­mance indi­ca­tor. The Unit­ed States also offers Inter­na­tion­al Bac­calau­re­ate (IB) diplo­mas to high school stu­dents under­tak­ing advanced study.

It’s gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect to write a sen­tence like “Aman­da is receiv­ing her bac­calau­re­ate from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty,” though say­ing bach­e­lor’s degree is more mod­ern. Either of these options will reign supreme to mis­tak­en­ly writ­ing “bach­e­lors.” Always remem­ber the apos­tro­phe unless you’re writ­ing an actu­al degree title.

And remem­ber, when it comes to grad­u­ate degrees, “mas­ter’s degree” is pret­ty much the same rules! (At least in Amer­i­can Eng­lish.) You’ll need to know that when you move on to a grad­u­ate degree.

Relat­ed:

Sources:

AP vs Chica­go Style