Associate degree

An associate degree or associate's degree is an undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level of academic qualification above a high school diploma and below a bachelor's degree.

The first associate degrees were awarded in the UK (where they are no longer awarded) in 1873 before spreading to the US in 1898. In the United States, the associate degree may allow transfer into the third year of a bachelor's degree. Associate degrees have since been introduced in a small number of other countries.

The title of Associate in Physical Science (Associate in Science (ASc) from 1879) was introduced in 1865 by the University of Durham College of Physical Sciences (now Newcastle University) and awarded from 1873. It required (in 1884) passes in three of mathematics, physics, chemistry and geology, and allowed students to go on to take the examination for the Bachelor of Science. As a university-level qualification lying below the bachelor's degree, this is considered to be the world's first associate degree in the modern sense, having been first awarded 25 years prior to the introduction of associate degrees into the US by the University of Chicago. The ASc was withdrawn in 1904. Durham also introduced an Associate in Theology (ATh) in 1901, which was only offered in 1901 and 1902. Yorkshire College (now the University of Leeds) offered Associate in Engineering and Associate in Coal Mining degrees from 1877 and there were thirteen different types of associate degrees offered in British universities in 1927.

The title of Associate in Arts, introduced by the University of Oxford in 1857 and sometimes referred to as the degree of Associate in Arts, predated the Durham degree. However, it was an examination for "those who are not members of the university" and who were under the age of 18; as such it was at the level of a high school qualification rather than a modern associate degree. Examinations were held in English, languages, mathematics, science, drawing and music, with the title being conferred on those students who passed any two (as long as the two were not drawing and music).

The qualification was introduced in the US in 1899, when the University of Chicago decided to replace its certificates with associate degrees, which were first awarded in 1900. American educationalist Walter Crosby Eells concluded that it is "not unlikely" that people at Chicago knew of the associate degrees being awarded in the United Kingdom, but there is no direct evidence of this. Chicago discontinued its associate degrees in 1918.

The associate degree spread across the US, with California College in Oakland (now the American Baptist Seminary of the West) introducing Associate in Arts and Associate in Letters degrees in 1900, and the Lewis Institute in Chicago (now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology) introducing Associate in Literature and Associate in Science degrees in 1901 (both replaced by the Associate in Arts in 1904) followed by the Associate in Domestic Economy degree in 1908. Associate degrees were not always two-year sub-bachelor's awards in the early 20th century: Harvard University and associated colleges awarded Associate in Arts degrees to students who had passed university extension courses "equal in number and standard to the courses required of a resident student for the degree of Bachelor of Arts" from 1910 to 1933.

By 1918, 23% of junior colleges were awarding Associate in Arts degrees. By 1941–42, 40% of junior colleges awarded some form of associate degree, and by 1960 this had grown to 75%, with 137 different associate degrees in use. Over a third of associate degrees awarded in the US in 1958–59 were granted by Californian junior colleges.

In the United States, associate degrees are awarded after completion of sixty semester or ninety quarter college credits.