If we're so intent on shortening degrees, why bother with the lectures at all? Just put a price tag on the parchment and be done with it.

[User11010866]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/university-three-years-student-loans-opinion-5HjdWx2_2/

Having just read this article, it seems to highlight a worrying trend in UK Higher Education. Compared to other global leaders, the UK already has the shortest academic years and the lowest contact hours. One has to wonder how our new graduates are expected to remain competitive on the international stage.

But then, you would not have been accepted onto any degree without very high grades. Not bragging, but my a level grades in 1974 were A, with merit in the S (extension) paper, A and D. My UCAs application got me accepted to all five of the universities to which I applied. It wasn't then quite the same, but they were all RG. I did not apply for Oxford or Cambridge because it was the last year before the elite men's colleges had to admit women. Otherwise, I would have applied for Balliol, Jesus and Kings, Bristol and York.

So much depends on the subject.

As a humanities graduate, I had a tutorial in each of my many courses every two weeks. In between tutorials there were lectures, and essays to write. Some lectures were in large theatres. Some were in smaller rooms. The tutorial groups were small, and in each tutorial, the essay topic and the essays were discussed. At the end of the tutorial the next essay question was given, and the reading list for the essay. I had at least 30 hours of reading to get through per week and a few essays to hand in.

The entire point of my degree was to read, digest what I read, and make a coherent, evidenced argument in response to the essay prompt.

I can see that a science student would need more supervised and more intensively directed classes.

• Tutorials were one hour long, and so were lectures.

The entire point of my degree was to read, digest what I read, and make a coherent, evidenced argument in response to the essay prompt.

This reminds me of the arguments for Scotland’s much derided ‘curriculum for excellence’ - that skills are what is important, not knowledge. When in reality skills are only relevant in the context of knowledge. Where is the learning of knowledge in this model?

The entire point of my degree was to read, digest what I read, and make a coherent, evidenced argument in response to the essay prompt.

The current problem is that this has now been automated by AI. Yes, you need to use site specific knowledge to figure out what is garbage. However, degrees as they are currently set up don't often provide site specific knowledge and it doesn't matter whether they last two, three or four years.

A lot of degrees in the UK are pretty general and are meant to teach analysis and critical thinking rather than site specific knowledge. However, to use AI, you need a lot of site specific knowledge to be able to critically assess it - often gained through years of experience and professional development.

We do not currently know how to square that circle.

@Dffhjpittr Can you use AI to do your speaking and listening core modules of a MFL degree? Or how about completing the year abroad? Does AI do it for you?

It is not what you can do on the course (you are not allowed to let AI write your essays either). It is what happens in the world of work. And yes, in the world of work (and leisure) you can use AI to translate.

As for the year abroad - what benefit is there to that over a gap year abroad?

?? If you don’t think you can gain knowledge from reading, you don’t know how to read (or AI is doing it for you and you are learning FA).

@Poppiesmocking Do you not think the human brain needs to do the learning on a degree? Translation jobs have been gone for years. MFL grads are not doing translation by and large these days. It’s not a vocational degree.

What in the listening and speaking modules cannot be done by an app?

So you don’t agree with PP that the entire point of a degree is “to read, digest what I read, and make a coherent, evidenced argument in response to the essay prompt.”?

Whilst knowledge can be acquired by reading through hundreds of papers, it is a lot more efficient if someone else who is a specialist in that subject has read them and tells you what was found out from them. Hence text books (and their online equivalents) and lectures.

Where it’s appropriate to the course, I’m in favour of this. My eldest had their course changed from 3 to 2 years at the last minute, by the university. This made the £9kpa approx. fees £11kpa approx. A bursary was offered for the balance.

So fees and accommodation costs were saved, and potentially these students were into employment or on their Masters a year earlier than many of their friends.
In person lectures were about 2 days a week and they really pushed independent learning and group sessions with other students outside these hours.
I appreciate it’s not ideal for every subject or student though.

Editing to add, that the holidays were obviously shorter, which isn’t ideal for accommodating part time jobs or meeting up with their school friends.

IMO, the university sector needs to set universal standards so people/employers can trust degrees.
This article from the Telegraph highlights the problems with grade inflation.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/07/plummeting-university-entry-standards-firsts-meaningless/
Unversity league tables are part of the problem in that they count the number of 1st/2.1s when ranking universities. This incentivises universities to award more 1st/2.1s.
Should a 3A* student doing a hard degree from a top tier university achieve the same degree class as a 2E student doing an easy degree from a lower tier university? IMO, this shouldn't happen. It makes a mockery of the system.
Parents and students need to be sure that the cost of a degree is worth it and this needs to be partly done by universities setting basic standards.
A 3-year versus a 2-year degree is less of a problem compared to the fact that some 3-year degrees have extremely low standards to pass.

I did a 2 year law degree -that’s offered by many rg plus Oxford. Generally they want you to be a grad to do it but it’s an undergrad degree.
we had most classes with the 3 year llb over same semesters. We just did a bit more classes each year (135 credits per year, 270 total) plus less choice of optional modules.
moh and first year results counted whuch is why they wanted grads so you could hit the ground running (easy if you did your degree the year before, less so if it was 20years ago)
nor sure why law is considered suitable for 2 year degrees and others not apart from it’s probably a popular second degree choice (and mostly overseas students from Canada and USA so more money earned)

@burnoutbabe Who pays for that if you already have an undergrad degree? That could be 6 years of undergrad money if the first degree is 4 years.

@fairyring25 Employers are adept at sorting out the wheat from the chaff. They have extensive tests and it’s certainly not a fineness that employers are bamboozled. Or confused. It’s obviously a joke about degree classification though because each university decides its own scheme. It’s clearly ludicrous but there we are.

We all paid ourselves I assume as law isn’t a funded second degree (some stem ones are)

I just meant it could have been our first degree. It was the same terms as any other degree at the university. Just took 2 years rather than 3. We still got the same vacations.

@burnoutbabe I see. I don’t think it would be funded. I’m assuming you went in with skills but how many of these degrees really exist for 18 year olds? Any?

Also - forgot to say - there’s a one year GDL conversation for around £10,000 so no need to spend double if you already have a suitable degree.

a few places do it as an accelerated degree -university of law for example. It’s just assumed you need year one as a trial on most degrees before your results count.

(and yes you can also do a conversion course if you want to be a lawyer but I just wanted to do that degree at a university and enjoy the experience-not sure anyone enjoys that crammed 7 topics into 9 months gdl. I can’t imagine one does much wider reading -it’s just a professional course)

What I don’t agree with is your view of how someone should learn a humanities subject. There are facts and evidence - eg in history, dates of events, primary evidence, secondary sources etc, so plenty you have to know about and prove you know about, but how you piece together the facts and evidence and draw conclusions from it all can differ, depending on the importance you place upon certain things, or the particular angle you have chosen to focus on. Likewise with law - yes, you can rely on someone else telling you “what the law is,” but you’ll fail as a barrister if you always accept someone else’s interpretation, and nobody will want you to represent them if you don’t understand how to argue their case and instead roll over and agree with everything the other side says and how they interpret precedent. Your whole purpose is to distinguish your client’s case from a previous one, or to point out the similarities with another case and its judgement and why that should apply here - there are always nuances, or points of difference, none of which you will appreciate if you expect someone else to do all the work for you so that you can make notes and ask what will be coming up in the exam and what you can ignore.

If you don’t read widely for yourself, you’re just parroting what someone else tells you to think without ever bothering to look at and interpret the evidence for yourself, which doesn’t take you any further than A-level. Of course, therefore, you must read widely, digest what you read, and then back up your own conclusions with evidence and facts put together in a way that suits your own argument, whilst taking into account other viewpoints and why you agree or disagree with them, having actually bothered to read them. If you just slavishly copy what the lecturer tells you to think, you haven’t actually learnt to think for yourself, you are pretending there is only one way of viewing something that is actually multifaceted. And you are welcome to read textbooks - they signpost you to sources that might forward your own argument, summarise things you have less time to go into in depth, give you points you actively disagree with, etc, and your own tutor will provide you with reading lists to help guide you or get you started, or from which to select your sources.

It feels scandalous. My daughter's uni has FIVE weeks off for Easter. Her last lecture was 20th March. No lectures or seminars when they go back. Just one small on-line exam and an assessment to hand in.

Her uni halls contact runs to the end of June and her private rental contact for the next academic year starts at the beginning of July - though term doesn't start until the beginning of October.

She's paying around £800 per month for accommodation that's not needed for April/May/June/July/August/September - six months of the year.

What's even more worrying is she's borrowing money for all of this from SfE at a ridiculous rate of interest. As a student from a low-income household, she's had to borrow even more than most as the previous low-income grant has been turned into a loan. She will be 'paying it back'/taxed (however you like to define it), until she's 60 years old.

She works hard at a part-time job, but that's mostly funding rent on the empty house over the summer.

I feel sick/have sleepless nights when I think of it.

I feel if the norm were two years, it would at least reduce accommodation costs.

I never suggested you should not read widely. I am talking about PP saying the entire point of a degree is to be able to read and respond to an essay prompt. Of course a barrister must be able to interpret individual cases but they must also have knowledge of how the law works, what are the main relevant Acts, Regulations and Statutory Instruments for their area of law, significant case law etc. There is a reason barristers specialise in different areas and that is because knowledge is important, not just skills.

Even in humanities, asking students to constantly reinvent the wheel is a waste of their time.

This suggests three year degrees are not full time.