Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts is a postgraduate academic master's degree awarded by universities in North America and the United Kingdom. The degree is typically studied for in Fine Art, Humanities, Social Science or Theology and can be either fully-taught, research-based, or a combination of the two. At Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin, however, it is awarded without further examination to those who are entitled to the undergraduate degree of Bachelor of Arts after a certain number of years, and in the ancient universities of Scotland it is awarded as a first degree to undergraduates.

North America

The Master of Arts (Magister Artium) and Master of Science (Magister Scientiæ) degrees are the basic type in most subjects and may be entirely course-based, entirely research-based or (more typically) a mixture.

Admission to a master's program is normally contingent upon holding a bachelor's degree, and progressing to a doctoral program usually requires a master's degree. In some fields or graduate programs, work on a doctorate begins immediately after the bachelors degree. Some programs provide for a joint bachelor's and master's degree after about five years. Some universities use the Latin degree names, and due to the flexibility of Word order in Latin, Artium Magister (AM) or Scientiæ Magister (SM) may be used at some schools . For example, MIT uses the degree abbreviations A.M. and S.M. for its master's degrees.

United Kingdom

The Master of Arts (MA) is awarded in Arts, Humanities, Theology and Social Sciences. However, some universities—particularly those in Scotland—award the Master of Letters (MLitt) to students in the Arts, Humanities, Divinity and Social Sciences. [It should be noted that the MLitt is a research degree at the University of Cambridge, where the Master of Philosophy (MPhil) is the standard one-year taught degree.]

The MA is a typically a "taught" postgraduate degree, involving lectures, examination and a short dissertation. Taught masters programmes involve 1 or 2 years of full-time study.

In law the standard taught degree is the Master of Laws, but certain courses may lead to the award of an MA or MLitt.

Until recently, both the undergraduate and postgraduate masters degrees were awarded without grade or class (like the class of an honours degree). Nowadays however, masters degrees are normally classified into the categories of Pass, Merit or Distinction, which tend to require marks of 50%, 60% and 70% respectively.

The degree of Master of Arts may also be awarded, in the case of the oldest British universities only, without further examination to those who have graduated as Bachelor of Arts and who have the requisite years' standing as members of the university or as graduates. This happens, in England, only at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (see Master of Arts (Oxbridge)). It is also the case at the University of Dublin in Ireland. In Scotland, the degree of Master of Arts is awarded in some universities as a first degree to undergraduates (see Master of Arts (Scotland)). The practice of awarding these degrees of Master of Arts without postgraduate examination or coursework is very ancient although, among modern universities, anomalous.