The Edinburgh University system is designed to give students the opportunity to experience a variety of subjects. This variety is achieved via the elective system, where students can take courses outside of their degree programme. By doing these courses, students can expand their subject interests, possibly discovering subjects they love that they never would have taken. The course structure at Edinburgh even gives you the opportunity to switch degrees up until the end of second year, allowing students the opportunity to alter their area of study if their interests change.
This process, however, is flawed. In most cases, you need all the compulsory courses to switch subjects – in some cases, these compulsory courses amount to around four or five modules, for example, in subjects like Social Policy and Sociology. Having to take this many compulsory courses simply to switch disincentivises picking a variety of courses, as without centralising your course selection, you won’t have the option to change your degree. Therefore, the Edinburgh course system doesn’t achieve its goal of providing freedom in the first two years of study, effectively failing students in enriching them with the apparent freedom they pride themselves on.
A solution to this problem of rigidity could be reduced by shaping our system more on the American college structure. American colleges allow students to pick a variety of classes in their first two years before declaring their major in the third year. This system allows students to shop around and ensure that the degree they are doing is the one they want to graduate with. No one wants students that are only doing their degree out of compulsion: we want students who are, at the bare minimum, taking their most suited subject.
If the University of Edinburgh was to pick up this American College style arrangement, then they would be truly abiding by their pledge of flexibility, one that they use as a badge of honour on open days. To offer the best possible service to students it can, the university has to change the way it views the pre-honours course system.
“Confused” by CollegeDegrees360 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.