Undergraduate education

Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education, usually in a college or university. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, a student pursuing an associate or bachelor's degree is known as an undergraduate student while a student who has already obtained a bachelor's degree and is pursuing a higher degree (masters, doctorate) is a graduate student. Upon completion of courses and other requirements of an undergraduate program, the student would earn the corresponding degree. In some other educational systems, undergraduate education is postsecondary education up to and including the level of a master's degree; this is the case for some science courses in Britain and some medicine courses in Europe.

Brazil follows the major traits of the continental European system; free public schools are available from kindergarten up to postgraduation, both as a right established in Article 6, caput of the Brazilian Constitution and as a duty of the State in Article 208, Items I, IV and V, of the Brazilian Constitution. Students choose their specific course of studies before joining the university. Admission to university is obtained by means of a competitive entrance exam known as Vestibular (a concept somewhat similar to the Baccalauréat in France). A later system introduced in 2009, adopted by most federal universities, uses the high school national examination (ENEM) result as part or a replacement of the Vestibular grade. Depending on the chosen course, upon graduating the student is granted: a technologist diploma, three years to complete, a bachelor's degree's diploma, which usually takes four or, in the case of Law, Veterinary, Geology and Engineering, five years to complete; or a professional diploma, which normally require five or, in the case of medicine, six years to complete.

In the United States, undergraduate education refers to a student who is studying for a bachelor's degree. The most common bachelor's degrees are Bachelor of Arts (BA/AB) and Bachelor of Science (BS/SB), but other degrees such as Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA), Bachelor of Music (BM), Bachelor of Social Work (BSW), Bachelor of Engineering/Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BEng/BSE), Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN), Bachelor of Business Administration/Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BBA/BSBA), Bachelor of Education (Ed.B), Bachelor of Liberal Arts (BLA/ALB), and Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) are also possible. Most commonly these degrees require four years of full-time study after high school. An additional accolade to the bachelor's degree is the Honours degree.

Unlike in the British model, degrees in law and medicine are not offered at the undergraduate level and instead are completed at a graduate level, after earning a bachelor's degree. Neither field specifies or prefers any undergraduate major,^{[citation needed]} though medical schools require a set of courses that must be taken before enrollment.

Students can also choose to attend a two-year community college before further study at a four-year college or university. In most states, community colleges are operated either by a division of the state university or by local special districts subject to guidance from a state agency. Community colleges award associate degrees of different types, some intended to prepare students to transfer to four-year institutions (e.g. Associate of Arts (AA), Associate of Science (AS)), and others intended to provide vocational skills and training for students wishing to enter into or advance in a profession. In some states considerable attention has been given to make sure that community college courses in fact prepare the students for the continuation courses they will encounter at the local college; this process of bringing courses into sequence is called articulation. Some community colleges have automatic enrollment agreements with a local college or university, where the community college provides the first two years of study and the university provides the remaining years of study, sometimes all on one campus. The community colleges award associate degrees, while universities and colleges award the bachelor's. However, some community colleges, such as Brazosport College in Lake Jackson, Texas offer bachelor's degrees along with associate degrees. Conversely, some universities such as the University of Delaware also award associate degrees.

In the United States, "college" and "university" are terms used differently in different states; New York's terminology is especially confusing (see University of the State of New York). A university is usually larger than a college, and has programs at the graduate level, but the distinction is not clear-cut. Some colleges (like Smith College) award graduate degrees, for example, and some colleges are larger than some universities. Some states have requirements a college must meet before it is allowed to call itself a university. Institutions seeking to grow have pursued various steps to turn two-year junior colleges into community colleges, community colleges into four-year colleges, awarding baccalaureate degrees, sometimes while still a community college, and colleges into universities, with graduate (post-baccalaureate) programs.

In Bangladesh, three-year undergraduate programs are known as Degree (Pass) courses and four-year undergraduate programs are known as Honours courses.

In Hong Kong, the English system is followed. Students sit for the Certificate of Education examinations at around sixteen years of age, and the Advanced-level, or A-level examinations at around eighteen, then follow by three years of undergraduate education, except for a few specific fields, such as medicine, nursing and law. This is due to be changed, with five-year secondary education and two-year matriculation examination combined and shortened to six years matriculation, and undergraduate education lengthened to four years. Students may be able to receive general education in their first years in universities, more akin to the North American system. The first batch of students under the new system will enter universities in 2012.