Degrees of value

IN HER article, “Three-year degrees may suit Scots”, Lesley Riddoch (Perspective, 10 October) talks about “the traditional four-year Scottish degree”. It depends when you’re counting from.

The three-year “Ordinary” degree was the norm in Scottish universities long before the four-year Honours degree was ever thought of, and when I was at secondary school in the 1960s I had teachers with Ordinary degrees, the only drawback being that they didn’t qualify you to be a head of department (PT in modern parlance).

I remember my middle-aged maths teacher being rather scathing about an honours graduate half his age who was parachuted in to take over the department when the former head retired.

The three-year Ordinary MA, with its mix of arts subjects including compulsory philosophy (either Moral Philosophy or Logic & Metaphysics), was seen as a good academic grounding for lawyers and church ministers, who on graduating MA went on to take a further vocational degree.

Hence all the lawyers and ministers with MA, LLB (or BL) and MA, BD respectively after their names.

Harry D Watson

Braehead Grove

Edinburgh