Administrative reforms during the 19th century included the replacement of oral examinations with written entrance tests, greater tolerance for religious dissent, and the establishment of four women's colleges. Privy Council decisions in the 20th century - the abolition of compulsory daily worship, dissociation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from clerical status, diversion of colleges' theological bequests to other purposes - loosened the link with traditional belief and practice. Furthermore, although the university's emphasis had historically been on classical knowledge, its curriculum expanded during the 19th century to include scientific and medical studies.
The postgraduate degrees of Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Letters (renamed Master of Science and Master of Letters in the 1970s) were introduced in 1895, and the university began to award doctorates for research in 1900 with the Doctor of Letters and Doctor of Science degrees. Oxford was the first British university to institute a Doctor of Philosophy degree (abbreviated DPhil) in 1917; it was first awarded in 1919 to Lakshman Sarup of Balliol College.
=== Women's education ===
The university passed a statute in 1875 allowing examinations for women at a level approximately equivalent to undergraduate studies; for a brief period in the early 1900s, this allowed the "steamboat ladies" to receive ad eundem degrees from the University of Dublin. In June 1878, the Association for the Education of Women (AEW) was formed, aiming for the eventual creation of a college for women in Oxford. Some of the more prominent members of the association were George Granville Bradley, T. H. Green and Edward Stuart Talbot. Talbot insisted on a specifically Anglican institution, which was unacceptable to most of the other members. The two parties eventually split, and Talbot's group founded Lady Margaret Hall in 1878, while T. H. Green founded the non-denominational Somerville College in 1879. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville opened their doors to their first 21 …
