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Why don't British universities follow the 'elective' system?

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I've studied at a US University, Keele and Edinburgh. Keele is a normal university - you can major in two subjects, as you can at almost every university.

I left the US University early because the 'general' education is just too much. It's a joke. It's good that students are well rounded (can write an essay/solve some mathematics/hold a decent conversation is most fields). It's really good because it means you should be able to talk to anyone about any field and be able to see more than 'oooh that's hard' (like you often get from students in the UK).

But you really shouldn't be doing a degree because of that. 4 years and thousands of pounds? You should choose a field you really like and study it in detail. Undergraduate and even postgraduate course content in the US is ruined. You may have great professors, but they can't even teach the advanced content that they can at a UK university. 4 years at a Scottish university is great because you get a chance in first year to adjust to what you really want to study and explore it in great depth. Learning things in other fields in also very important, but a degree to a theoretical level should be a foundation that supports learning in other fields throughout the rest of your life.

Reply 21

nulli tertius

Original post by MartinMorrison

Keele is a normal university - you can major in two subjects, as you can at almost every university.

That is the present reality of Keele but when it was founded it was different. Until the 1990s courses there involved:

One key feature of the new Keele syllabus was the Foundation Year. A course of lectures and tutorials led all students on a journey across all disciplines of learning to establish a common basis of knowledge. The subsequent three years involved two subjects at honours level and three (later two) subjects at subsidiary level - at least one of the subjects had to be from the sciences, one from the arts and one from the social sciences.

Reply 22

crunchychips

Here at Warwick (at least on the math course), you can take many optional modules (some are recommended and timetabled so as not to clash, for instance physics or economics modules), but you can in principle pick any module offered by the university.
While not quite american style electives, it's getting there.

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