A First Prize diploma is sometimes wrongly described as being similar to a master's degree in music performance or composition.
At the Paris Conservatory, and at all government sanctioned institutions of higher learning in France, a Diploma of Musical Studies — the degree that offers the First Prize — was accredited by the French Ministry of Culture, but not as a higher education academic degree.
Beginning around the late 1960s, First Prize degrees in all music disciplines, in a sense, became a victim of their own success.
degree was instituted across Europe in part to incorporate comprehensive higher education in the fine arts with comprehensive universities and in part to unify standards in higher education of the Bologna Declaration that was adopted by 29 European countries[a] in 1999.
[3] First Prize degrees in Quebec are awarded upon attaining a high level of proficiency before a jury at the end of the fourth cycle of study at a conservatory — or two years.