A ten-year man was a category of

mature student An adult learner or, more commonly, a mature student, is a person who is older and is involved in forms of learning. Adult learners fall in a specific criterion of being experienced, and do not always have a high school diploma. Many of the adult ...

at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. Under the University's statutes of 1570, a man over twenty-four could proceed to a BD degree ten years after

matriculation Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination. Australia In Australia, the term "matriculation" is seldom used now ...

without first gaining a BA degree or a MA degree. The device was not used much until the second decade of the nineteenth century. It was abolished in the mid-nineteenth-century university reforms, after criticism that it had become a route to a Cambridge degree which required no formal test of ability,Ten-year men
/ref> ruling out enrolling as a ten-year man after 1858, although those enrolled by then remained members of the university, and ten-year men did not become extinct until 1900. The ten-year route to a degree was significantly used by men who had already been ordained as clergy, and wanted to increase their status by taking a degree; likewise, it found use by laymen who aspired to be ordained but who were not (usually for financial reasons) able to take a degree in the regular way. Although the ten-year BD was criticised for its lack of appropriate oversight and inadequate means of assessment, it should not be assumed that all those who enrolled for it were men of low academic abilities: most were merely from backgrounds too poor to allow them to go to university at the usual age. Scholars among them include

Thomas Hartwell Horne Thomas Hartwell Horne (20 October 1780 – 27 January 1862) was an English theologian and librarian. Life He was born in London and educated at Christ's Hospital until he was 15 when his father died and he had to work. He then became a clerk ...

, Cornelius Bayley,

Joseph Bosworth Joseph Bosworth (1788 – 27 May 1876) was an English scholar of the Anglo-Saxon language and compiler of the first major Anglo-Saxon dictionary. Biography Born in Derbyshire in 1788, Bosworth was educated at Repton School as a 'Poor Scholar' ...

John Hellins :''This subject should not be confused with his grandson John Hellins, 1829–1887, clergyman and entomologist''. John Hellins FRS ( 1749 – 5 April 1827) was a British autodidact, schoolteacher, mathematician, astronomer and country parson. ...

and

William Scoresby William Scoresby (5 October 178921 March 1857) was an English whaler, Arctic explorer, scientist and clergyman. Early years Scoresby was born in the village of Cropton near Pickering south-west of Whitby in Yorkshire. His father, William S ...

References

{{reflist Terminology of the University of Cambridge 1570 establishments in England 19th-century disestablishments in England