The Student Room Group

For those that don't want to have a 3 year holiday/course...let them crack on.

It continues to amaze me the amount of students that allow universities to dictate to them that they have to undergo 3 years of study for certain courses. This of course in reality isn't 3 years - its around 7 months a year (21 months of study at university). Anyway I'm sure the majority of students are happy to accept this - after all finishing school/college are daunting - and the prospect of putting off going into full-time employment for another 3 years is appealing. However, my friends son is at the other end of the scale. He's an extremely gifted linguistic and has had the benefit of living in France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy all by the age of 20. Hence he can speak fluent French, German and English and has good conversational Italian. He also is teaching himself Spanish online and has already at an intermediate level. Needless to say a Modern Languages degree for him would of interest and beneficial. Last year he started a 3 year course and after 6 weeks found himself bored, under-challenged and hitting 1st's with little to no effort. He took himself to his academic advisor and asked - is there anyway I can fast-track through this - I'll happily do all the modules, take all the exams and even pay up any fee you need to be out of here in a year. "That's not how it works, this is a 3 year course - you stay the distance and get the qualification at the end." The candidate responded using the analogy - "That's rather like telling Lewis Hamilton if he goes to live in a new country and he's required to take a driving test to drive there - he has to go through all the 10 weeks recommended lesson plan!" Academic Advisor called him arrogant. Friends son quit - now works as a leading translator for Santander earning £30,000 plus. My point of the post is - almost any other qualification you take - be it an A-Level, Diploma or license - it is RECOMMENDED that you take a period of study/instruction - however - you can take the exam to pass the course actually when you like. The above example had taken Italian, French, German GCSE all by the age of 14. Degrees should be more flexible - but no they want their money and they have enough sheep prepared to go through the system.
Reply 1
Studied or contact time? And is that whilst at Uni? As said - for 5 months of the year they arn't there.
Reply 2
The majority of students I know were back 1st week of June...they go back late September - that's 3 and a half months alone...
Reply 3
Christmas holidays, Easter Holidays (3 weeks each) and "Reading Weeks". Getting off the topic I know but how many companies avertise a job or service at X amount a year and then reveal will be closed for 5 months of that year.
What a waste of time when you can simply use google translate.
Original post by Bules676
It continues to amaze me the amount of students that allow universities to dictate to them that they have to undergo 3 years of study for certain courses. This of course in reality isn't 3 years - its around 7 months a year (21 months of study at university). Anyway I'm sure the majority of students are happy to accept this - after all finishing school/college are daunting - and the prospect of putting off going into full-time employment for another 3 years is appealing. However, my friends son is at the other end of the scale. He's an extremely gifted linguistic and has had the benefit of living in France, Switzerland, Germany and Italy all by the age of 20. Hence he can speak fluent French, German and English and has good conversational Italian. He also is teaching himself Spanish online and has already at an intermediate level. Needless to say a Modern Languages degree for him would of interest and beneficial. Last year he started a 3 year course and after 6 weeks found himself bored, under-challenged and hitting 1st's with little to no effort. He took himself to his academic advisor and asked - is there anyway I can fast-track through this - I'll happily do all the modules, take all the exams and even pay up any fee you need to be out of here in a year. "That's not how it works, this is a 3 year course - you stay the distance and get the qualification at the end." The candidate responded using the analogy - "That's rather like telling Lewis Hamilton if he goes to live in a new country and he's required to take a driving test to drive there - he has to go through all the 10 weeks recommended lesson plan!" Academic Advisor called him arrogant. Friends son quit - now works as a leading translator for Santander earning £30,000 plus. My point of the post is - almost any other qualification you take - be it an A-Level, Diploma or license - it is RECOMMENDED that you take a period of study/instruction - however - you can take the exam to pass the course actually when you like. The above example had taken Italian, French, German GCSE all by the age of 14. Degrees should be more flexible - but no they want their money and they have enough sheep prepared to go through the system.


To be honest, I wish universities would offer more 2-years/accelerated degrees. Often they are only for LAW/Business and Management. Considering the amount of money that has to be spent on tuition fees and maintenance, it's ridiculous how little time you actually spend in lectures/teaching time (around 24 weeks at my uni; that's only 6 months!) compared to 12 months that a calendar year actually has.
The trouble with your example is this friend's son was more or less already an expert in the field he was trying to get a degree in. Most students are not like that.
University is as much about self management as anything else.

If the work is too easy, if he is bored and not challenged the answer is pretty easy, go find something else to do.

Offer to tutor less able students, get a job, do your own research or offer to help lecturers with their research, find somewhere to do an internship part time. Lots of options of what to do other than kick up a fuss about nothing.
I have always thought I'd have been able to do my degree in a year if they let me give it a go. It would have been horribly hard work of course, but I think it could have been done. We had 12hrs contact time in 1st year, 10hrs in 2nd year and 8hrs in third. Only adds up to 30 hours a week (6 hours a day) overall.

A lot of our lectures were literally read off Powerpoints, which was very annoying, so I think in certain modules we could have got away with not even going to those and just reading the relevant slides for the assignment questions given (not all modules had exams at the end, in fact I only did 4 exams my whole degree).

If you were prepared to work hard for a year - or maybe 18 months at a uni where more contact time was expected - you could do it. I never struggled to meet any deadline, and rarely did a great deal of work at weekends or in the holidays.

Quick Reply