Two year degrees trial starts
A new degree format, which offers a qualification of the same standard as a three year course but taken over two years, may be initiated as an option nation-wide after being piloted in five ‘trial’ universities around the country.
The scheme will allow students to complete three year courses in the time of two by studying in two semesters of twenty weeks and substituting the summer vacation for a third term. To avoid the demands of this system placing a strain on teaching resources, this arrangement is to be carried out through distance learning, workshops and independent study.
The five universities piloting the scheme, the University of Northampton, the Medway partnership in Kent, Derby University, Staffordshire University and York neighbour, Leeds Metropolitan University, will be providing their students with the option of a “compressed degree” from September onwards before it is to be decided if the scheme will be expanded and applied nationwide.
This “intensive fast track degree” is geared to provide what Bill Rammell, Minister for Higher Education, described as “flexibility” in the university experience and it is hoped that it will tempt more students into higher education. By allowing students not only to begin work sooner but to leave university with less debt, the scheme seems to be geared towards attracting young people of different backgrounds or less favourable financial standing. Links have been drawn to the government’s target of increasing young people with higher education to fifty per cent, and the scheme may be an initiative to aid government progress in reaching its aims.
However the proposals have been met with criticism. Roger Kline, the head of Higher Education for the union fears the new format will encourage “cramming” instead of careful and considered study and result in graduates not developing the necessary skills employers expect graduates to have gained from university.
The National Union of Students has expressed its scepticism and the Union’s National Secretary, Gemma Tumelty, has already publicly stated her beliefs that an intensive two year degree will leave less time for part-time work and may cause financial problems for precisely the lower income students which the government is hoping to attract through the scheme.
