The Ladder of Qualifications: From School Leaving to Professional Licensure

A high school diploma marks completion of secondary education in the United States and Canada, earned after four years spanning grades nine through twelve. Individual high schools award it, but states, provinces and localities set the coursework, grading and exit exam requirements behind it, so what counts as a diploma varies even within one country.

For those who did not complete a traditional high school, the General Educational Development test offers an alternate route to the same starting line. Developed by the American Council on Education from 1942, its four subject exams in science, mathematics, social studies, reading and writing earn a Certificate of High School Equivalency, administered at more than six thousand centres across the United States.

Outside North America the same school leaving stage takes other shapes. New South Wales has awarded its Higher School Certificate since 1967, a two year Year 11 and Year 12 program now run by the NSW Education Standards Authority, with English the only compulsory subject among a wide choice of humanities, science, language and vocational courses.

The ladder's next rung sits between school and a full degree. First introduced in the United Kingdom in 1873 and spreading to the United States by 1898, the associate degree is typically a two to three year credential from a community or junior college, often built to transfer directly into the third year of a bachelor's program.

The bachelor's degree is the standard first university qualification, usually earned in three to four years and less often up to six. Awarded across virtually every field from the humanities to engineering, it is normally the entry ticket to the master's or doctoral program that follows.

Within the bachelor's degree, the split between arts and science credentials is older than it looks. The University of London first formally conferred the Bachelor of Science in 1860, though American schools such as the Lawrence Scientific School had awarded an equivalent credential since 1851, and which subjects earn a BSc rather than a BA still varies by university and country.

Beyond the bachelor's degree, the master's degree asks for one to two more years of specialised study, combining coursework, examinations and often a thesis. Its roots trace to a 1233 papal bull that recognised the medieval mastership as a licence to teach, a lineage that still shapes the degree's name today.

Some master's degrees are built around a profession rather than a discipline. Harvard's Graduate School of Business Administration conferred the first Master of Business Administration in 1908, and the degree has since become one of the most recognised postgraduate qualifications worldwide, assessed internationally by accreditors such as AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS.

Not every postgraduate credential runs the full length of a master's. A postgraduate diploma sits at master's level but usually drops the dissertation, completed in one to two years, and in many university systems can later be converted into a full master's degree with further study.

At the top of the academic ladder sits the doctorate. The Doctor of Philosophy traces to the medieval University of Paris but took its modern research focused form at the University of Berlin in the early nineteenth century, a model built on original research and a defended dissertation that spread to govern doctoral study worldwide.

In Germany, Austria and other continental European countries, the PhD is not the final academic rung. Habilitation dates back to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation around 1652 and requires a second, independent thesis defended before a faculty committee, typically four to ten more years of work and, in many systems, a requirement for a full professorship.

Some doctorates train practitioners rather than researchers. The Doctor of Medicine traces to the medieval medical school at Salerno, whose graduates won formal legal sanction to practise under Roger II of Sicily in 1137, and in the United States and Canada today it is the professional degree, typically about six years of study, that qualifies a graduate to become a physician.

Law took the same professional doctorate path in the United States. The University of Chicago Law School first conferred the Juris Doctor in 1902, and its three years of study in constitutional law, civil procedure, criminal law, contracts, property and torts are only the first step, since graduates must still pass a jurisdiction's bar examination before they may practise.

A professional degree is often not enough on its own. A bar examination is the licensing test a jurisdiction's bar association requires before admitting a lawyer to practise, and its difficulty varies enormously worldwide, with pass rates as low as six percent in Japan after years of required legal study.

Engineering built its own licence around the same principle. Wyoming issued the first Professional Engineer licences in the United States in 1907, and the credential now typically requires a four year accredited degree, passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, about four years of supervised experience, and a further Principles and Practice exam before an engineer may legally seal design documents.

Healthcare licensure follows the same shape. New Zealand became the first country to formally register nurses under law in 1901, and today a Registered Nurse completes an accredited two to three year associate degree or four year bachelor's degree before passing a licensing exam such as the NCLEX-RN used in the United States and Canada.

Beyond licensure, some fields built voluntary certifications instead. The Chartered Financial Analyst designation began as the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts in 1962, administering its first exam in 1963, and today requires a bachelor's degree, four thousand hours of investment work experience and three sequential exam levels, a process averaging about four years.

Project management took a similar certifying route without a licensing board. The Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional credential qualifies candidates through a bachelor's degree plus thirty six months of project leadership experience, or a high school diploma plus sixty months, and by mid 2020 more than a million professionals across two hundred and fourteen countries held it active.