"Baccalaureate" is one of those words that sounds precise and is not. Depending on which country you are in and who is speaking, it means a university degree, a high school leaving exam, a two-year international school programme, or a farewell church service. All four uses are correct. None of them can be substituted for another. Here is the map.
Meaning 1 â In the United States: a bachelor's degree
In American English, baccalaureate most often means a bachelor's degree: the standard four-year undergraduate qualification awarded by a college or university. A "baccalaureate degree" is a Bachelor of Arts (BA), a Bachelor of Science (BS or BSc), or one of the professional variants such as the BFA or BBA.
You meet the word in this sense mainly in formal or administrative writing â degree requirements, state education codes, nursing and teaching licensure rules. "Applicants must hold a baccalaureate degree from an accredited institution" is bureaucratic register for "you need a bachelor's degree." Nobody says it conversationally; you say "I have a bachelor's."
Related terms that cause confusion:
- Post-baccalaureate (often "post-bacc") â coursework taken after a bachelor's degree but before graduate or professional school, most commonly a pre-medical programme for career changers.
- Baccalaureate service â a farewell service or ceremony, often religious in origin, held around graduation at some American schools and universities. Historically it involved a sermon addressed to the graduating class. This meaning is unrelated to the degree in everything but etymology.
Meaning 2 â In France: the baccalaurÃĐat, or "le bac"
In France, the baccalaurÃĐat is the national examination taken at the end of lycÃĐe, usually at 17 or 18. It is a school-leaving qualification, not a degree, and it is simultaneously a graduation certificate and the entry ticket to French higher education: passing the bac confers a right of access to public university.
The bac comes in three main streams â gÃĐnÃĐral, technologique and professionnel â and its structure has been reformed repeatedly, most substantially in the reform that replaced the old fixed streams (S for sciences, ES for economics, L for literature) with a system of chosen specialisms plus a common core, and moved part of the assessment into continuous school-based marking.
Two things are worth knowing about the bac because they cause the most cross-cultural confusion:
- It is roughly equivalent to a US high school diploma plus some AP coursework, not to a bachelor's degree. A French speaker saying "j'ai mon bac" is saying they finished secondary school.
- Results are graded with distinctions â mention assez bien, bien, trÃĻs bien â and the mention matters for selective programmes in a way that a US diploma's honours designation usually does not.
Neighbouring systems have their own version of the same idea: the Spanish bachillerato, the Italian esame di maturità , the German Abitur, the Dutch VWO diploma. All are secondary leaving qualifications that grant university access.
Meaning 3 â The International Baccalaureate
The International Baccalaureate (IB) is a non-profit educational foundation, founded in Geneva in 1968, and by extension the name of the programmes it runs. Its best-known programme is the IB Diploma Programme, a two-year qualification for students aged roughly 16 to 19 taught in IB World Schools around the world. The IB also runs a Primary Years Programme, a Middle Years Programme and a Career-related Programme.
The organisation was historically abbreviated IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization); it now generally brands itself simply as the IB, though IBO is still widely used and understood.
The Diploma is scored out of 45: six subjects graded 1 to 7, plus up to 3 points from Theory of Knowledge and the Extended Essay. We cover the structure in detail in What is the IB Diploma?
Why "baccalaureate"? Because the founders were building an internationally portable equivalent of the European school-leaving qualification, and the French baccalaurÃĐat was the obvious model. The name signals "university entrance qualification," not "degree."
Where the word comes from
The Latin form is baccalaureus, and the popular etymology derives it from bacca lauri â "laurel berry" â evoking the laurel wreath awarded to victors and scholars. That derivation is almost certainly a later folk etymology, invented because it sounded fitting.
The likelier origin is medieval Latin baccalarius, a word for a young man of low rank, a squire, or a junior tenant farmer, later applied in the universities of Paris and Bologna to a student who had completed the first stage of study and could teach under supervision but had not yet become a full master. That is the sense that survives in "bachelor's degree." The laurel-berry spelling was grafted on afterwards, and the two forms have been tangled ever since â which is why "bachelor" and "baccalaureate" mean the same thing in a US degree context, despite looking unrelated.
The abbreviations, disambiguated
| Abbreviation | Stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| BA / BS / BSc | Bachelor of Arts / Science | US and UK degrees |
| Bacc, bacc | Baccalaureate (degree) | US administrative writing |
| Bac | BaccalaurÃĐat | France |
| IB | International Baccalaureate | Worldwide |
| IBDP | IB Diploma Programme | Worldwide |
| IBO | International Baccalaureate Organization | Older name for the IB |
How to tell which one someone means
The reliable test is the speaker's country and the age of the person being described.
- Talking about a 22-year-old in the US, finishing university? Bachelor's degree.
- Talking about an 18-year-old in France, finishing lycÃĐe? The baccalaurÃĐat.
- Talking about a 17-year-old at an international school anywhere, mentioning HL subjects, TOK or an extended essay? The IB Diploma.
- Talking about a ceremony with a speaker and a graduating class? A baccalaureate service.
The ambiguity is not going away, because each community's usage is old and well established within its own borders. If you are writing for an international audience, the fix is simple: say "bachelor's degree", "the French baccalaurÃĐat", or "the IB Diploma" and never leave "baccalaureate" alone to carry the meaning.
Related: What is the IB Diploma?