Foreign Perspectives

As usual, this information comes out in dribs and drabs which is a bit frustrating but, up to now, the leaks have been fairly encouraging.

The latest is about the compulsory courses which are the level one science courses (S104 plus either SXR103 or its non-residential equivalent S155), S288 (the replacement for the level two residentials) and one of the level three project courses (SX*390). Of these, the oddity is the level three courses because there’s one corresponding to each of the existing named science degrees so one would have thought that these would all have been rolled into the level three equivalent of S288 (or that S288 would have been split into the equivalent S*288).

For those who have already started along the path of a named degree but who won’t make it by December 2014, whether or not they’ll need to do S288 will be assessed individually. Somehow I suspect that anyone who’s done, say, the L2 biology and who would have met the biology requirements will be approved, if that’s not the case then you might not be approved in that you’d have ordinarily received an open degree in that situation.

Incidently, as far as the information about S288 goes so far it looks much more interesting than the original snippets of information protrayed it months ago. In effect it’s four or five courses rolled into one and will allow you to follow pathways through it corresponding to each of the existing residentials which it replaces. Moreover there are short residentials built into it in various forms (there’s not a whole lot of information out about it yet) although you can similarly follow a non-residential pathway too. One thing that really puzzles me now is how they’ll cope with the different charging of residential and non-residential pathways and, if there are a number of these mini-residentials, how the students will afford the travel costs for them.