[1] Through the Bologna initiatives and support of the European Union, Europe is unifying and standardising especially the structure of their masters' programmes, making them more and more accessible to foreign students.
In Germany, Scandinavia or Eastern Europe for instance, most masters programmes have been traditionally totally free of charge.
In Belgium, possessing a master's degree means that one has completed a higher education (usually university or college) programme of 4 or 5 years.
An example in the field of education in business/management was the 5-year programme of "Handelsingenieur" (Dutch) or "Ingénieur de Gestion" (French) (English: "Commercial Engineer") with an important amount of mathematics and sciences, and which corresponds to an M.Sc.
The MA and MSc.degrees are similar to a traditional Master's Programme, which are obtained by completing a higher education with a typical duration of five years on an accredited Danish university.
The term ylempi korkeakoulututkinto is used to denote master's degrees earned at a university of applied sciences.
In medical fields, the Licenciate (Finnish: lisensiaatti, Swedish: licensiat) is an equivalent degree, the completion of which takes five (dentistry) or six years (medicine and veterinary), while the Bachelor of Medicine's title (Finnish: lääketieteen kandidaatti) is gained after second year of studies.
Many countries follow the French model (e.g. the Francophone regions in Switzerland, Belgium, Lebanon, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia).
The French Ministry of Higher Education has set up a web portal listing all the masters available in France: Trouvermonmaster.gouv.fr Due to the EU-wide Bologna process, the traditional German academic degrees Diplom and Magister have mostly been replaced by the undergraduate Bachelor (3-4 year study programme) and postgraduate Master's degree (1-2 year study programme).
The Fachhochschulen or Universities of Applied Sciences conferred the Diplom (FH), whose length of study is between the bachelor's and master's degree.
Under the harmonised system there is no legal academic difference between the bachelor's and master's degrees conferred by the Fachhochschulen and Universitäten.
It, however, qualifies the holder to study at a university or Fachhochschule, whether the Meister holds the regular entry qualification (Abitur or Fachhochschulreife) or not.
An exception to this is Trinity College Dublin, where the MA is an undergraduate degree awarded 21 terms after matriculation as at Oxford and Cambridge.
[6] University College Cork and Mary Immaculate College, Limerick offer a Master of Education (M.Ed), also the Mater Dei Institute now at St. Patricks Campus, Dublin City University had a Masters in Religious Education (MREd), now more commonly awarded as an MA.
The old university system (Vecchio Ordinamento) consisted in a unique course, extended from four to five years or maximum of six (only Medicine), with a variable period (six-twelve months usually) for the thesis work.
A student can apply for the PhD level course, called Dottorato di Ricerca, only after getting a Master's degree.
Medicine and some other school ("Facoltà"), notably Law, have adopted the reformed system only partially, keeping the previous unique course.
This process was complicated by the fact that the Dutch higher education system has two separate branches, Hoger Beroeps Onderwijs (HBO, which indicates College or "University of Professional Education" level), and Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs (WO, which indicates University level).
Before the Bachelor/Master system was introduced, HBO graduates received the title baccalaureus (with the corresponding pre-nominal abbreviation "bc.
WO degrees consisted of several different titles, such as doctorandus (pre-nominal abbreviated to drs., corresponds to MA or MSc), ingenieur (ir.
There might also be additional requirements such as a certain higher than average GPA, sometimes it's possible to complete the bridging program parallel to the HBO Bachelor.
In this model, following the Bologna process directives, higher education is split into a 3 to 4-year Bachelor programme ending with a title of licencjat (non-technical) or inżynier (technical fields), and a 2-year programme (uzupełniające studia magisterskie) giving the title of magister or magister inżynier.
Traditionally Spanish university studies comprised one single five years degree called "Licenciatura".
In engineering disciplines MSc was called civilingenjör, a four-and-a-half-year academic program concluded with a thesis.
There was no direct equivalent to a B.Sc, however, a three-year engineering degree with a more practical focus called högskoleingenjör was close.
The magister will still exist alongside the new master, but is expected to be largely neglected in favour of the new, internationally recognized degree.
The MSc of engineering, civilingenjör, was expanded to five years and a new BSc was introduced to coexist with the unaltered högskoleingenjör.
Either in partnership or as private consortia, networks of universities in different countries are trying to work out shared curricula and adopt similar methodologies.