ten-year man

At the University of Oxford, a mature student, usually a clergyman, who could obtain a degree after ten years’ standing from matriculation, without following the ordinary undergraduate course or taking all the usual examinations. The arrangement was intended particularly for men who had entered the Church or other professions and could not afford to attend Oxford as conventional undergraduates. The term is chiefly historical, reflecting the older system of Oxford degrees and the social changes brought by nineteenth-century university reform.