History of the PHD

The origins of the doctorate dates back to the ijazat attadris wa 'l-iftta ("license to teach and issue legal opinions") in the medieval Madrasahs from the 9th century, though it was limited to Islamic law at the time, as in a Doctor of Laws degree. The doctorate was later extended to philosophy in the European universities in the Middle Ages which generally placed all academic disciplines outside the professional fields of theology, medicine and law under the broad heading of "philosophy" (or "natural philosophy" when referring to science). The degree of Doctor of Philosophy was a doctorate, generally granted as honorary degrees to select and well-established scholars.

According to Wellington, Bathmaker, Hung, MucCullough and Sikes (2005), the first Ph.D. was awarded in Paris in 1150, but not until the early nineteenth century did the term "Ph.D." acquire its modern meaning as the highest academic doctoral degree, thanks to university practice in Germany. As Wellington et al. explain, prior to the nineteenth century professional doctoral degrees could only be awarded in theology (Th.D.), law (J.D.), or medicine (M.D.). In 1861, Yale University adopted the German practice (first introduced in the 19th century at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin) of granting the degree to younger students who had completed a prescribed course of graduate study and successfully defended a thesis/dissertation containing original research in science or in the humanities.From the United States the degree spread to Canada in 1900, and then to the United Kingdom in 1917. This displaced the existing Doctor of Philosophy degree in some universities; for instance, the D.Phil. (higher doctorate in the faculty of philosophy) at the University of St Andrews was discontinued and replaced with the Ph.D. (research doctorate). Oxford retained the D.Phil. abbreviation for their research degrees. Some newer UK universities, for example Buckingham (est. 1976), Sussex (est. 1961), and, until a few years ago, York (est. 1963), chose to adopt the D.Phil., as did some universities in New Zealand.