What is an "honours degree"?

Most first degrees in the United Kingdom are described as "with Honours". It is common to see the abbreviation "(Hons)" in academic postnominals. Many people talk of degrees in two subjects as "joint honours". But it is much less common to hear what "honours" actually means. And related to this, just what is a degree without honours?

This post is only going to discuss the situation in the UK. That's common to most posts here, but it needs explicitly stating because internationally there's a lot of variation and it's going to be confusing to discuss the situation in other countries like Australia or South Africa.

Historically an honours degree indicated a higher level of achievement, usually through a more advanced course of study or taking a tougher exam, in contrast to a degree that could be labelled "ordinary", "pass" or "general". This distinction still exists but exactly what the additional achievement is varies widely.

In Scotland the distinction remains clear. The first degree takes either three years and results in an "ordinary degree" or four years and results in an "honours degree". On the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework an ordinary degree is an award at Level 9 and an honours degree is an award at Level 10.

However, the distinction doesn't exist on the Regulated Qualifications Framework used in England and Northern Ireland and the Credit and Qualifications Framework for Wales. (Aren't government websites awful?!) Both a "degree with honours" and an "ordinary degree without honours" are Level 6 qualifications. Other than the numbering (which is mainly driven by pre-university qualifications), this is the main difference in higher education between the frameworks for Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

(Both these level numbering systems differ from the Open University's internal Level 1, 2, 3 system that indicates the equivalence to a year of study on a full-time degree.)

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland it is now standard for all Bachelor's degrees to be offered as "with honours" and a degree without honours is usually a consolation. Looking around various official websites it seems clear that there isn't a single standard and many universities don't seem to publish an explanation at all (or if they do, they bury it on their websites). Various explanations abound online including claims that a degree without honours means:

• Only passing 300 credits instead of 360
• Scraping a pass but missing out on a third
• Repeating a year
• Not doing a dissertation

It would take a lot more research to delve into how true these are, though many Bachelor's degrees either don't have a dissertation/other independent research project or don't make it a compulsory module (including the Open University Bachelor of Laws (Honours)). A 300 credit degree would indicate taking two and a half years of full-time study or the equivalent which is awkward for most universities, structured as they are around whole years, but quite doable at part-time institutions. When the Open University began it did have an "ordinary degree" and in later years this was explicitly 300 credits, but this seems to have been dropped in recent years.

Because honours are now so standard it is increasingly common for them to not be mentioned, whether on CVs, in postnominals or other listings. This can even sometimes apply to universities themselves - for example here's the listing for Law LLB at the University of Warwick (Internet Archive version to fight potential link rot) with no mention of honours or "hons" at all.

And what does "joint honours" mean? Simply that a person is taking a degree with two subjects rather than one. It's short for "joint honours degree" but the shortened form removed the wrong word hence the confusion.

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