Tassel Colors for Academic Dress

School graduation tassels are a timeless tradition that has been around for centuries. The tassel is a symbolic representation of graduating from an educational institution and is typically worn on the side of a mortarboard cap, and graduates take great pride in wearing theirs through the commencement ceremony. In the United States, academic dress is rarely worn outside commencement ceremonies, and within it color does the talking: the color of the hood represents the school or department the wearer is graduating from, and the tassel may indicate the university's colors or the colors of the specific college or discipline.

Note: check with your school to confirm the proper color. The list below gives the general standards, but it is not necessarily correct for your institution — your school is the final authority. Students planning what to wear and study next can also browse fashion schools, and the color system behind academic dress sits inside the wider Fashion directory, where the same discipline of standardized color appears in industry form.

Inter-Collegiate Colors by Discipline

The colors allocated to the various academic disciplines have been largely standardized. They are:

• Agriculture — Maize
• Arts, Letters, Humanities — White
• Business — Tan
• Commerce, Accountancy, Business — Drab
• Dentistry — Lilac
• Economics — Copper
• Education — Light Blue
• Engineering — Orange
• Fine Arts — Brown
• Forestry — Russet
• Journalism — Crimson
• Law — Purple
• Library Science — Lemon
• Medicine — Green
• Music — Pink
• Nursing — Apricot
• Oratory (Speech) — Silver Gray
• Pharmacy — Olive Green
• Philosophy — Dark Blue
• Physical Education — Sage Green
• Public Administration — Peacock Blue
• Public Health — Salmon Pink
• Science — Golden Yellow
• Social Work — Citron
• Theology — Scarlet
• Veterinary Science — Gray

Note: check with your school to confirm the proper color. The list above gives general standards but is not necessarily correct for every institution. A number of other items — cords or sashes — may also be worn, representing various academic achievements, and those vary even more from school to school.

History of the Graduation Tassel

The tradition of wearing tassels during graduation ceremonies has been around since the 14th century. During the Middle Ages, universities held graduation ceremonies for students who had completed their studies, and as part of the ceremony a student received a cap with a tassel attached. The tassel was a sign of prestige and accomplishment, and it was believed to bring luck to the graduate. Over the centuries, the graduation tassel evolved from a single color to a wide variety of colors and styles. In the 19th century, schools began to use different colors to denote different levels of academic achievement. In the United States, the tassel was typically black and was worn on the right side of the mortarboard cap.

Today, school graduation tassels are still a popular tradition. Schools use different colors and styles of tassels to represent different levels of academic achievement, and some schools even allow students to customize their own tassels with unique colors and designs. Tassels remain a symbol of academic achievement and a reminder of a student's hard work and dedication. The tassel itself, as a textile trimming, belongs to the same family as the braids, tassels and cords used throughout apparel and home textiles.

Color as a Code, in Dress and in Industry

Academic tassel colors work because everyone agrees on the code in advance — which is exactly how standardized color works in the clothing industry. The dyeing that produces a tassel, a hood or a garment is covered in dyeing and finishing, the creative professions that work with color codes daily include the graphic artist directory, and the business of presenting finished clothing is covered in clothing merchandising and printing clothing and fabric. Read either way — as ceremony or as industry — a shared color language is what lets a color mean the same thing to everyone who sees it.