Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery
Medical degrees differ from other undergraduate degrees in that they are professional qualifications that lead holders to enter a particular career upon receipt. This is not the case with most other undergraduate degrees, so whilst the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery are undergraduate or graduate degrees (depending on the institution), they are perhaps more accurately conceptualised as a so-called first professional degree. Other professions whose qualifications follow a similar pattern include:
Undermatching
Undermatching is considered as a serious issue in higher education, and it is getting increased attention from education researchers and policymakers. Undermatching can affect long-term economic inequality and social mobility, and it can negatively affect college graduation rates. According to one view, minority and less-affluent students have substantially lower graduation rates and take longer on average to get degrees when they do stay in school. Low college graduation rates are a problem in the United States; one estimate is that fewer than 60% of high school graduates manage to earn a bachelor's degree, which is one of the worst completion rates of developed nations. The problem of undermatched students has attracted the attention of the executive branch. Proposals to reduce undermatching include making it easier to transfer between colleges, making financial aid policies more transparent, and helping students identify colleges that will challenge them academically, possibly by sending high-achieving low-income seniors an information packet about college choices. According to a report by "NBC News" in 2014, some elite colleges such as Williams strive actively to bring bright low-income students by supporting them financially but these colleges can find themselves pressed to make up the shortfall by seeking out more full-paying students; as a result, students at such colleges tend to be mostly affluent with some low-income students but few from the middle class, which reporter Nona Willis-Aronowitz described as a "middle class squeeze".