There are three principal features of academic dress: the gown, the cap and the hood. Their design and heraldry were, from as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the great European universities, the outward sign of the bringing together of students and privileged persons under the same discipline.
To preserve their dignity and meaning, it early became necessary for these universities to set rules for academic dress. American universities agreed on a system in 1895 and set up a suitable code of academic dress for the colleges and universities of the United States. In 1932, and again in 1959, the American Council on Education revised the code that, for the most part, governs the style of academic dress today.
THE GOWN. The flowing gown comes from the twelfth century. Many think it was worn in olden times as protection against the cold of unheated buildings. It has become symbolic of the democracy of scholarship, for it completely covers any dress of rank or social standing. At Thomas Edison State University, the associate degree gown is burgundy. The gown is black for all degrees above the associate, with pointed sleeves for the bachelor’s degree; oblong sleeves for the master’s degree; and bell-shaped sleeves for the doctor’s degree. For the bachelor’s and master’s degree, the gown has no trimmings. For the doctor’s degree, it is faced down the front with velvet and has three bars of velvet across the sleeves in the color distinctive of the faculty or discipline to which the degree pertains.
THE CAP. When Roman law freed a slave, he won the privilege of wearing a cap. Thus, the academic cap is a sign of freedom of scholarship and the responsibility and dignity with which scholarship endows the wearer. Old poetry records the cap of scholarship as square to symbolize the book, although some authorities claim that the mortar board is the symbol of the masons, a privileged guild. The color of the tassel on the cap is black or burgundy. The associate cap is burgundy. Caps for master’s and doctor’s degrees are often black, but may appear in other colors, as well, depending on the rest of the regalia.
THE HOOD. Almost all of the students and faculty in the medieval universities were clerics (minor church ecclesiastics) and were tonsured (i.e., had shaved heads), and the hood served to cover the shaved head from the cold of unheated buildings. Eventually, the hood was superseded by the skull cap and evolved into a headdress more or less like those in use today. Heraldically, the hood is an inverted shield with one or more chevrons of a secondary color on the ground of the primary color of the college. The color of the facing of the hood denotes the discipline represented by the degree; the color of the lining of the hood designates the college or university from which the degree was granted.
Toni M. Terry, BA