Illinois Ged

Q: What does GED stand for? I can find High School Equivalency Diploma, and I know what it is, but not specifically the words the initials GED represent.

A: it's "General Equivalency Degree", and that's what I thought it was too, but this site, http://www.acenet.edu/clll/ged/index.cfm , says it's "General Educational Development". It looks like this is the official site for the testing service which administers the exam needed to get one's GED, so I believe in truth GED stands for General Educational Development, unless proven otherwise. I think the other is a linguistic UL. A brief perusal of federal statutes indicates that common sense prevails in this matter. "General Educational Development" is the services/departments which administer GED programs, but a "General Equivalency Degree" is what one receives after

passing though those programs. My theory, unencumbered by any facts whatsoever beyond my unerringly correct insticts, is that the governmental department that was given responsibility for developing the whole program was named the "General Education Development" department and so the degree was named GED... but as Xho points out it doesn't really make sense as the name of the degree itself, and someone cleverly figured out to also dub the degree "General Equivalency Degree". Either that or the other way around, I'd wager. On that score, I'll bet anyone that either Illinois or UW-Milwaukee will win tonight's game. I'll give you fantastic odds, too.