The B.S. Degree: A New Objective in Nineteenth-Century American Catholic Higher Education

My talk surveys issues coincidental to the introduction of the Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree at nineteenth-century American Catholic institutions of higher education. Starting with Santa Clara College, a Jesuit school in California that conferred a B.S. degree in 1859 and continuing to 1900 (and beyond) with the College of Notre Dame of Maryland that awarded B.S. degrees to women, a total of nineteen Catholic institutions deemed the Bachelor of Science a fitting academic honor alongside the venerable Bachelor of Arts (B.A) degree. Essential to a B.A. was its objective of inculcating mental discipline in a student, an ideal usually achieved through the study of Latin and Greek over several years. In contrast the B.S. dispensed with these dead languages and in their place granted more emphasis to the various sciences along with the modern languages, practical substitutions made in response to the escalating demand for Catholic colleges to offer a more useful education. Based on my ongoing dissertation research, I argue that this new objective to award Bachelor of Science degrees evolved out of an existing Catholic educational commitment to teach science to students. Moreover, it demonstrated how Catholics found a way to package a science education which remained in touch with their long-held classical educational practices, like those found in the Ratio Studiorum, while offering a curriculum that provided a desired knowledge of science.