the next category below. Nevertheless, at Cambridge both higher categories of student still had to take the Senate House Examination if they wished to have an honours degree. Commoners (at Oxford) or Pensioners (at Cambridge & Dublin) paid the standard fee and were more likely remain to graduate. Below them came servitors (at Oxford) and sizars (at Cambridge & Dublin), whose college fees were subsidised by their colleges and who in return had to fetch and carry, sweep, and serve at table. This group was much more likely to graduate. Oliver Goldsmith was a sizar: Isaac Newton was a subsizar. These privileges and humiliations were gradually removed during the nineteenth century. Reforms in the late sixteenth century allowed some ordinary undergraduates also to bypass the BA stage: after the bachelor of arts degree, it used to be necessary to wait another three years to become a bachelor of laws or medicine, but after paying a fine it was possible to leave college after three years in residence, study at the Inns of Court or a teaching hospital in London, or abroad, and return at the five year mark for a professional bachelor's degree, allowing later progression to a doctorate, as happened in the case of William Blackstone. Students at King's College, Cambridge, who until 1865 were all from Eton College, could until 1851 graduate BA, and in due course MA, without taking the university examinations. Students at New College, Oxford, who all used to come from Winchester College, had the same exemptions until 1834. While the length of the undergraduate degree course has been shortened to three or four years in all subjects, all three universities still require roughly seven years to pass before the awarding of the MA degree. The shortening of the degree course reflects the fact that much of the teaching of the liberal arts was taken over by grammar schools, and undergraduates now enter universities at an older age, in most cases between 17 and 19. (It may be noted that the school-leaving certificate in France today is known as the baccalaureate.) Durham University (first MA awarded 1838) and the University of London (first MA awarded 1840) broke away from the ancient model of England by considering the MA to be a higher degree distinct from the initial degree, awarded after further examination. However, in instituting a course of further study beyond the initial baccalaureate, these