The Student Room Group

Ordinary Degree

At the age of 50, I decided to go back into education to study for my first degree. I decided to do a Foundation Degree in Music, which took two years and I really enjoyed it. During my third year, which was a BA (Hons) top-up, I fell ill with depression so I didn't complete the year. Having done half of the modules, I signed up to complete the course for a fourth year believing that it wouldn't be so hard to do the other two and a half modules. Unfortunately in October, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he was too frail to receive treatment. Father passed in February and it took a while before I realised that I hadn't really connected with my supervisor. After explaining the situation, I was offered an intercollation, which I refused because I was told I would have to pay my student finance back. I couldn't afford to do that so I told my supervisor I would try and carry on. I guess my grief was too much and before I knew it, my supervisor was telling me he had spoken to the examination board and they were awarding me an Ordinary degree. I had not heard of this term before so after some research I come to the conclusion that my path in education has come to an abrupt stop. I can't find any information on whether this can be turned into a Honours degree with further studies but what I have found is that no one will accept it as a springboard to a Masters degree. My supervisor said I was on track for a 2:1 so this is really bothering me. On top of this, 4 years of student loan now seems like wasted money. Does anyone have any useful advice on what my options are or what I should do?
Reply 1
Original post by laithar
At the age of 50, I decided to go back into education to study for my first degree. I decided to do a Foundation Degree in Music, which took two years and I really enjoyed it. During my third year, which was a BA (Hons) top-up, I fell ill with depression so I didn't complete the year. Having done half of the modules, I signed up to complete the course for a fourth year believing that it wouldn't be so hard to do the other two and a half modules. Unfortunately in October, my father was diagnosed with cancer and he was too frail to receive treatment. Father passed in February and it took a while before I realised that I hadn't really connected with my supervisor. After explaining the situation, I was offered an intercollation, which I refused because I was told I would have to pay my student finance back. I couldn't afford to do that so I told my supervisor I would try and carry on. I guess my grief was too much and before I knew it, my supervisor was telling me he had spoken to the examination board and they were awarding me an Ordinary degree. I had not heard of this term before so after some research I come to the conclusion that my path in education has come to an abrupt stop. I can't find any information on whether this can be turned into a Honours degree with further studies but what I have found is that no one will accept it as a springboard to a Masters degree. My supervisor said I was on track for a 2:1 so this is really bothering me. On top of this, 4 years of student loan now seems like wasted money. Does anyone have any useful advice on what my options are or what I should do?


Hi, sorry to read about your troubles. I've moved your thread to the more general "University Life" forum where you should get more replies.
I believe that you can convert an ordinary degree into an honours by completing the additional credits. An ordinary degree is 300 credits and an honours degree is 360 credits. You need to email/write to universities and find one that will let you transfer your existing 300 credits onto the final year of their course. I studied with Open University and I know they let you transfer credits, but they changed which courses they offer recently so not sure if they offer music.

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