Are science degrees considered harder than humanities/arts degrees?

[LoniceraJaponica]

DD has been deiscussing with her boyfriend that the degree she wants to do (biomedical science) has a lot of contact hours (upwards of 21 hours a week dependig on where she goes).

He has been crowing that he will have about 9 or 10 hours a week (history). Obviously there is lab work to take into consideration for DD, and both degrees rely on a lot of self study. Is the BF deluded that he is going to have a much easier ride?

If he wants a decent degree, he should be spending a lot of time reading. If he's not so good at self-motivated study, it will probably be harder, but he might not recognise that until it's too late. There's a fair bit of writing in a history degree.

With that attitude, bf is likely to get a very very average 2.2 or even a third. Not great value for upwards of £45,000

He missed 2 grades at A level and lost his place at a very prestigious university, so I wonder if he is still over confident of his capabilities.

21 hours a week is not that high for a science degree? My science first degrees (double degree but still) was average 40 hours a week. Less in our final year as we had lab projects to do. On top of that we needed to do a lot of reading as well, many essays etc.
We were told that the material taught in classes would produce roughly a 2:2 if that’s all we learned and learned it perfectly.
I would imagine an arts based degree lends itself even more to extra reading. The contact time is just the base.

Incidentally I don’t think one is ‘harder’ across the board - id have struggled far more with some arts disciplines than with sciences. It’s just what you have an aptitude for.

However, if he thinks 8 hours a week is going to get him a good degree he’s wrong. He will need to do a lot more. He can still have fun, but he will be doing a lot of reading around those hours.

so I wonder if he is still over confident of his capabilities

Possibly. Or bluffing to save face?

Good luck to both of them.,

He will have plenty of reading to do to make up the hours. Back in the 1980s I think I had about 9 contact hours per week, but stacks of reading as prep for seminars.

"My science first degrees (double degree but still) was average 40 hours a week"

40 contact hours
That is a lot
The 21 - 25 hours covers lab work, seminars, workshops and lectures. DD simply wouldn't have the stamina to spend 40 hours a week doing that and self study.

I did both. It’s much easier to pass an arts degree as you can just write stuff to an extent. It’s harder to pass science as you need to understand enough basics to get some problems right, you can’t guess the basics (unless you are really very bright at science in which case the basics are very obvious and hardly take learning) . Obviously a good degree in either is hard and one will be harder than the other for most people.

Yes he is

Where has 9-10 hours contact for History? That’s quite generous. My friend’s DS gets 6 hours a week for Politics. High ranking RG for that subject. He will be expected to do work outside of contact hours. It’s a lot more onerous than school.

More hours spent on a course are not necessarily any indication of the worth or value of the course. You can spend all the hours you want and still get a third. On any course. Also she’s being subsidised by the arts grads. So she should be happy they pay over the odds for their degrees. Having said that, both degrees are cheap if they never earn a 40% Tax wage as they won’t pay much grad tax and never pay off the loan. So it could be win/win for both! You never know.

I think you misunderstood my question @Bubbles DD wants to do biomed, and that has upwards of 20 hours a week contact hours, plus self study.

The boyfriend is doing history at a Scottish university and has said that he thinks he will have about 9 or 10 hours of lectures/tutorials a week, plus self study, but he thinks he will have far more time for partying and leisure time than DD will. He thinks that he he will not have to do more self study than DD. I hope that makes sense.

My chemistry degree peaked at about 32 hours per week IIRC. Partner at the time was doing History, peaked at 12 hours per week.

But that's not including 'homework' time - research and essay writing. I had very little of that, while a history degree is all about it. So it evens out.

Which is easier depends more on how the person thinks - I'm very sciency and can give you a complete cause and effect and statistical analysis of something but would fail entirely to write an essay on the effects Archbishop Runcie had on the Anglican Church in the early 80s.

He's entirely wrong about the self study and is going to get a nasty shock when he fails his first year. Those 4000 word essays don't just turn up by themselves!

Both mine would say science degrees are way easier than humanities. The latter require essays and the ability to write, whilst the former just require understanding the obvious and a bit of adding up.

The BF should be warned. DD knows a few who missed grades for "more prestigeous Universities" and wandered around acting as if they were above it all. A rude shock awaits if they don't buck up.

I think DD would agree with you Needmoresleep. She hates essay writing, although she must have been able to write a decent few essays as she got an A at A level geography.

Yes, I think he's deluded. One of the hard things about an essay-writing subject with low contact hours is motivating yourself to keep working. Some people would find it much easier than a science degree, because they enjoy working in a fairly solitary, flexible way. I'd hate to be stuck in a lab for 20 hours! But if he's already someone who slacks off a bit, he may find it more difficult than he expects.

IME a lot of students in essay writing subjects have got good at dashing off an essay quickly, as they do in exams. It's a shock to realise they can't just read a couple of books and stick the main arguments together with a paragraph at the beginning and end to tie it in to the question!

I did a science degree back in the mid 90s. We had roughly 36 hours per week between lectures, tutorials and labs. And due to pressure on lab spaces, 2 years we had labs at night (6-9pm). Every year we started at 9am every day (except in final year, I only had 4 9ams and 1 was a 10am start!).

Then we had to write up the labs, do problems for the tutorials, a few essays or projects each term, out side of the actual teaching hours.

And reading/study on top of those again.

I went to 1 adventurous Society meeting a week (1 hour over lunch), met students and graduates from that some weeks for drinks (those free would go to the cinema in the afternoon on Wednesday - I managed 2 movies in 4 years!, and all would meet in a specific pub that night including graduates now working), I went to a debating society most Saturday nights and a couple of midweek events of theirs (maybe 5 in 4 years), and I had about 4 weekends away with the adventurous Society annually. And I only trained once a fortnight with my sports team (preferred a team outside of Uni but it was local enough I could still get there) but played most Sunday mornings in the matches.

But my subject ate up a huge amount of my time. And it wasn't the most technical of science/technical subjects. Food Business Engineering was a class that had 46 hours timetabled per week. And groups like medicine, dentistry, veterinary, engineering all had huge timetable loads as well.

History - huge amount of reading and essay writing despite not so many timetabled hours. Same for law, English, psychology, etc.

Business was a reasonable mix, more structured, still a lot of reading and lots of group project work.

But the Arts, Law, Music and Business faculties all seemed a lot more fun than anything science related in terms of time off and social lives.

On the flip side, all the technical Faculties tended to be grouped on 1 side of campus, and tended to have our own types of fun (I really enjoyed my time in Uni , in case it sounds like I didn't).

Well my DS has just started a history degree at a Scottish university, they do three modules at a time, about three hours per module timetabled but they have written instructions telling them to also do 12 to 15 hours self study per module! That's at least 46 hours a week if they are dutiful, DS is also trying to get ahead for an English lit module next semester for which he had to read 12 books... Not much of a skive if you ask me!

I went to art school, also not a skive, 9-5 studio time every day, set breaks and a register after lunch like school and then lectures in the evening some days before going back to studios ( open til midnight) to finish projects. Not complaining mind you, it was fun and fostered close relationships between students and staff.

My science degree (many years ago though) was 9 to 5 every day, with just Wednesday afternoons off. My flat mate's arts degree was 4 hours a week, but she spent a lot of time at the library.

I also had about a gazillion exams for finals, flat mate had 4 papers (and 2 of those they had already seen and practised ).

I did an arts degree and never really felt that I was working more or less than anyone else. Then again, I was quite a hard worker by nature.

What I would say is that the potential for distraction and dropping out is far, far higher for an arts degree! I think it is a bit easy to get so wrapped up in the 'other life' of being at university that you lose sight of why you are actually there: people got very involved in student clubs and societies, sports, jobs and even long term relationships that rapidly became incredibly 'domestic'. Several of my friends went completely AWOL by Year 3. Some pulled it round in time for finals but a couple had to defer for an extra year.

I had a friend who did a music degree at an Oxford College in the 80s. He had a glass of sherry and chat with his tutor for an hour each week, and was expected to play the organ in a local church for a service each Sunday.
Needless to say, he graduated with a 1st.

I think anyone who does a music or art degree would probably be very talented in the first place or they wouldn't be doing it.

40 contact hours shock That is a lot

Yeah it was. Bloody good degree though - I subsequently taught at other unis (including RG ones) and the course I did was very different to the courses we taught. It was basically the harder content from several subject areas (we did all the quantum physics stuff as well as the biochem.)

I also found time to do other stuff though. God knows how, I guess your energy at that age is pretty high. I did a sport/activity that required whole days out at weekends and evening training and I partied a fair amount too. I don’t trmember sleeping much ;) I feel knackered just thinking about it. Couldn’t do it now

I loved it and I’m also academic - I found reading a pleasure and I was good at exams. The only downside was being unable to pick optional modules like others did (I fancied doing a language and never had time) and not getting Wednesday afternoons off like everyone else (bummer.)

My mathematics degree peaked at 11 hours a week, so it's not just arts degrees that have low contact.

I didn't have any extra reading, but the lectures had to be deciphered and understood and I was expected to do a lot of problem sheets.