Today I came across an individual with a C.Phil degree. A search brings up various UCLA departments that awards this degree. UCLA definition Students who have passed their Ph.D. oral qualifying exam and have completed at least one course in each of at least four quarters (three of them consecutive) at UCLA will automatically be awarded the intermediate degree of Candidate in Philosophy (C. Phil.). The C. Phil. Degree may not be awarded simultaneously with or after the Ph.D. degree. Further investigation reveals that a UCLA C.Phil is only good for 7 years. However I found many university faculty members with C.Phils (but with no doctorate) awarded as far back as 1973 from either UCLA or UCI. I also found faculty (mostly in Europe) with Cand.Phil listed with their academic credentials Sounds like a C.Phil equate to the Ph.D(ABD) that has been mentioned on this site.
C.Ph. Thanks for this posting. I never heard of this award before. I've only seen it once, on a school website, in reference to a faculty member whom I knew and I thought had only held an M.A. I called the school to ask what "C.Ph." was. The receptionist took a message, but I never heard back. Instead, a few days later the "C.Ph." was replaced on the faculty page with "M.A.". I assumed it had only been a typo.
We have two different things here, the European cand. phil. and the UC CPhil. The latter seems to me to be not unlike the master's degrees many US institutions hand out along the way to a doctorate to indicate ABD status; the former is a qualification in its own right at roughly the master's level (in Scandinavia, mainly, if memory serves). It all depends, tho' -- in Belgium the Kandidaat is the 1st cycle, so an undergrad. degree, folowed by the Licentiate (2nd cycle) and Doctoraat (3rd cycle). jon porter --- who was technically ABD in his doctoral programme from initial enrollment -- gotta love UK research degrees