I think this is a bad idea it doesn't afford students much flexibility. Not many students are going to choose 3/4/5 courses from the off without wanting to change at least 1 of them further down the line. Unfortunately under these proposals, students will be unable to ditch subjects without losing all their progress and without spending another year at college before gaining their qualification.

Nobody is entitled to a qualification. For any course with a qualification at the end, the rules and requirements are laid out at the beginning, be they coursework or exams or a mix of both and what aspects of study will be covered. If you can't hack it, it's nobody's fault but yours. There's no reason I can see that courses should be flexible.

The job of qualified courses is to provide all those participating with a trusted measure of their competence on a standardised, objective level. Everyone does the same thing, in the same time period and does the same tests under the same conditions. Anything else is just a waste of everyone's time. You might as well just hand the certificates out at the beginning and all go off for tea & cakes.

Jon

I don't see why the current system is such a problem?

It's the way Universities work, so surely it's good preparation?

No course is going to survive without students. Since academic institutions require the funding that follows each student, I think they should suit the needs of those students.

Academic institutions are not there simply to give students qualifications. If they do so, they are failing in their greater responsibility to society at large. Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who had been to a medical school that 'catered to the needs of it's students', or one that made damn sure those that got the qualification earned it?

Jon

Fair basis? It simply isn't. It's an artificial measure of your ability to recall information. That's it. It's of no use in the work place, nor academia.
Lots of people who perform perfectly adequately outside of an exam hall can't perform well in an exam.
If you honestly believe that modules benefit those who are committed enough to 'plod along' - well aren't those entirely the people you want to hire? That show commitment to finishing?
Name me one contribution to society that's arisen solely because of someone's ability to sit at a desk for 2 hours and answer questions on a topic they were taught 6 months ago.
Far more use are those people who've got the tenacity to see the goal on the horizon and are able to chart their work load in order to attain that goal in real day-to-day targets, instead of cocking about for most of the term then hitting the books for the last month.

It depends.

a) - I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Jesus wept.