Why are Scottish degrees 4 years long?

[zagara]

Apologies if this is a naive question, but is it always the case that degrees taken in Scottish unis are 4 years long because the first year is a kind of ‘general year?’

If applying from outside Scotland, is it sometimes possible to miss that first year? Just started thinking about unis for DD and much as she likes the look of St Andrews, 4 years U.K. there may be a bit of a push? She wouldn’t mind a 4-year degree if one year was a year abroad or placement year, but it seems 4-years is standard in Scotland (no year abroad included or placement)? Or have I missed something here? Thanks!

@BrinksmansEntry

I'll consider myself downgraded then

Me and my degree are off to have a wee think on the naughty step as I tell it to stop getting ideas above its stations, and I tell myself that I didn't do actual masters level study.

If you did a 4 year degree from a Scottish ancient then no, you didn’t do masters level study.

I didn't go to a Scottish Ancient.

Anyway, I strongly suspect I'm taking all of this a lot less seriously than other people on this thread.

@BrinksmansEntry

I didn't go to a Scottish Ancient.

Anyway, I strongly suspect I'm taking all of this a lot less seriously than other people on this thread.

And yet you wrote:

Courses are 4 years long because you come out with a Masters degree at the end. It is possible to finish at end of 3rd year with a Bachelor degree, but most are automatically set up so that you graduate end of 4th year with a Masters

Which is just wrong for Scottish undergrad degrees. An MA is not a post grad masters.

I’m english and went to Edinburgh. You have to choose three subjects in first year, even if your chosen subject is just one eg art or physics, so you might do art, maths and english.

The best thing about the Scottish system is the ability to choose again without restarting. In first year I took Russian politics and international relations only to discover I want cut out for a law subject or a language . In year 2 I took politics economic history snd social history and that was my final MA subject. So you can change tack and not restart and you end up with a Scottish MA at the end of it.

Well worth it as we don’t always know what we want when we first choose uni subjects.

@TheAbbotOfUnreason well, yes I wrote that. Because it's true. Not sure what your point is, but I've not invented anything here. As I said, I suspect others are taking this more seriously than me.

My son is at Cambridge and they are all awarded MA - whether it’s a BSc or a BA. It’s just an anomaly based on some tradition.

None of them are under the delusion that they are, in fact, doing a Masters . Just imagine! “No need to apply to another super-competitive application process folks - no! It says MA on the certificate, so just pretend you’ve did a postgrad rolled in with your undergrad. Nobody will ever know...”

A Master’s is a whole other application process and another level of qualification. I can’t believe how anyone could go through university and life thinking they have a masters when they haven’t done one! Is this for real? Did you not talk to anyone else when you were at uni? What did you think everyone else was doing?

I did a dissertation at the end of my (4-year) BA. So what? This is standard in humanities. Doesn’t make it an MA . I did an MA (part-time) over 2 years and, what do you know, that was another assessment process, another dissertation and another graduation . If you had done an actual MA or MSc, you would know there is no chance of confusing it with your BA / BSc (or MA if in Scotland).

Yeah, some of us take things seriously because we’re not going to tell our kids that a standard 4 year uni course in Scotland gives them a Masters degree.

@randomiser and @theabbotofunreason -completely agree.

Ph how silly I must be, with my silly Scottish degree and the silly anomaly when my friends and I, and people I know who went to other Scottish universities, all got our MAs, how silly we were not to check with the English and tippex out our lowly Scottish degree awards and rewrite them with the correct award we got. Silly old us. I mean, how did us grown adults sleep walk through life with our silly misunderstanding that our degrees were lesser, not just by dint of being a silly Scottish anomaly in the award system but also because they were so easy yet still had to be done over 4 years to make sure the students could complete them. Oh me, oh my, how did we get this far. Am so pleased to have been corrected now.

I have a Scottish degree done over 4 years and it's not a Masters. Yours is the same level of degree as mine but it's got a different name. You don't have an actual postgraduate Masters degree. It's an undergraduate degree that they've called a Masters but its the same level as my BSc or a BA.

BrinksmansEntry

Perhaps email the uni you went to on Monday and get them to clarify things for you?

Or are you just having a laugh on here?

@BrinksmansEntry go and look up the SQA qualifications framework and you will see that a MA from the 5 unis that award them is SQF level 10 exactly the same as a BA(hons), a three year BA/Ordinary is SQF level 9.