Please check this discourse on the matter, perhaps someone can further research on original etymology of the Bachelor word [1].
I have read before about the origin of the convocation robe from the fruits gown but it's rather comical IMHO. The more plausible explanation is that they want to copy the learned people at the medieval time, i.e. Arabic speaking people, during the European dark ages by imitating the Arabic styled robe with the robe and the turban. It is very similar today when all the people in the corporate boardroom meeting are expected to wear two piece suits in order to look professional.
That's only more plausible if you're entirely unfamiliar with Christian clerical and liturgical garments. Traditional Christian religious garments are rooted to a large extent in the Mediterranean, especially Greece, the Levant, and North Africa, but none of those places would be centers of Arabic culture until centuries later. To the extent they're influenced by Arabic culture, the link probably goes both ways. There's a shared history, after all; shared at a time when what would become modern European and Arabic cultures were minority cultures at the periphery of far more ancient empires.
> The more plausible explanation is that they want to copy the learned people at the medieval time, i.e. Arabic speaking people, during the European dark ages by imitating the Arabic styled robe with the robe and the turban.
The academic dress found in most universities in the Commonwealth of Nations and the United States is derived from that of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which was a development of academic and clerical dress common throughout the medieval universities of Europe.[1]
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The modern gown is derived from the roba worn under the cappa clausa, a garment resembling a long black cape. In early medieval times, all students at the universities were in at least minor orders, and were required to wear the cappa or other clerical dress, and restricted to clothes of black or other dark colour. The gowns most commonly worn, that of the clerical type gowns of bachelor's degrees (BA and BS) and master's degrees (MA and MS), are substantially the same throughout the English-speaking world. All are traditionally made of black cloth, (although occasionally the gown is dyed in one of the university's colours) and the material at the back of the gown is gathered into a yoke.[2]
Medieval Arabic-styled robes were not necessarily black, but also white and many dyed colors. They were shaped differently and had a particular trim not seen in academic robes. Certainly, the Arabic world was more educated and advanced than the European during the Middle-Ages, but the robes are a coincidence.
That's just terrifically improbable. Historically, bachelor's degrees were, in fact, intermediate degrees awarded part way through the period of study required to achieve a master's degree - which was the "real deal". The degrees emerged during a period when the term bachelor was already established as a term referring to a squire or junior knight.
We already have plenty of English words from Arabic; there's really no need to retcon even more.
