Undergraduate degree
In the United Kingdom, a bachelor's degree is the most common type of "undergraduate degree". Some master's degrees can be undertaken immediately after finishing secondary education; however, these courses are usually extended versions of bachelor's degree programs, taking an additional year to complete. Most bachelor's degrees take three years to complete, with some notable exceptions, such as Medicine taking five years. Often students can initially enroll in a 4-year program then leave after three years and be awarded a bachelor's degree.
Medical education in Australia
Historically, Australian medical schools have followed the United Kingdom by conferring the degrees of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) to its medical graduates, whilst reserving the degree of Doctor of Medicine (MD) to be issued to those who have completed higher research studies or given honorarily to those who have contributed significantly to the medical professional community (analogous to the PhD or honorary doctorates). While a significant proportion of Australian medical schools as of the early 1990s have shifted from undergraduate to graduate entry programs (that is, enrolling students who have already completed a bachelor's degree in another field of study), medical schools continued to nevertheless award the MBBS as its standard medical degree regardless if it was an undergraduate or graduate entry program. In order to address this, and perhaps in an effort to align themselves better with their counterparts in the United States for nomenclature's sake of awarding a doctorate degree to medical doctors so that they have an academic basis for their title of 'Doctor' (that is, where traditionally, the title of 'Doctor' for medical doctors with bachelor's degrees was more of a customary formality rather than an academic one), medical schools nowadays have moved to awarding MD (or a combination of a BSc and MD) instead of the MBBS to its medical graduates. However, given that the MBBS is categorised in the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) as a Level 7 Bachelor's level degree it had the benefit of not mandating its students to partake in a research project, whilst the MD is categorised a Level 9 Master's level degree it does require its students to formally produce a research project as part of their studies; that said, students in the MBBS program commonly did nevertheless still pursue research on an extra-curricular basis.