I live in Australia where if you study a particular degree, all (or the vast majority) of your subjects are directly related to that field.
I may be wrong but movies tend to give me the impression that at American universities/colleges, all students study a wide array of subjects, attend random lectures, and students room with people studying different things.
It also appears to be a lot about the lifestyle and not just get in, do your study, get your degree.
Are American studies specialised or more general?
Thank you! 🫶
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I can only really speak for the UK system, but in general the ability to take ‘side’ classes will be very degree dependent.
If you are working towards one of the traditionally ‘heavy’ degrees like medicine or engineering, generally there will be a pretty strict set of requirements before your degree is awarded. So your courses will be chosen for you in order to cover all of those individual topics without any room to change – to miss a class could mean missing a requirement for your chosen degree.
But not all degrees are quite so strict in their requirements. Often you will find that to complete you major (or main) degree you will need to complete a certain selection of classes, but these will not make up a full schedule, or provide enough credits to cover awarding a degree. In this case you will need to study additional classes from a larger pool of topics to gain those extra credits.
The exact requirements will vary between degrees and schools, but there can sometimes be a set of general classes every student will take, a pool of related classes to choose from, or other selection system.
ELI5 – there are courses like history, English composition, art, math and science along with electives that go with a degree to “round out” the students.
Freshman (first year college students) have a lot of non-major courses because they are getting a general education.
Junior and Senior college students (those close to or who will graduate) have courses almost exclusively on their major.
When I was a Senior, almost all of my courses were on my major except for a physiology class that was a degree requirement and only open to juniors and seniors (who had completed their general degree requirements) and a “20th century American drama” class that was a nice break from all the serious subjects (it was a class on famous plays of the 20th century).
Not an American, just studied there for about a year. There are minimal list of classes you need to take to graduate. In my case I also needed to be in a classroom for a minimum number of hours (excluding covid times), so your guiding teacher try to fill your program with the things that you must take, you should take in a very optimized schedule so all requirements can be met. Beside that, you can take almost any class given that teacher does not object. This is called shadowing and does not count toward your grades but it is free afaik. Also, if you pay for it you can take literally any class, given that you completed the prerequisites, since it is a place of learning and who is to block you from getting it if you paid for it.
I can only really speak for the UK system, but in general the ability to take ‘side’ classes will be very degree dependent.
If you are working towards one of the traditionally ‘heavy’ degrees like medicine or engineering, generally there will be a pretty strict set of requirements before your degree is awarded. So your courses will be chosen for you in order to cover all of those individual topics without any room to change – to miss a class could mean missing a requirement for your chosen degree.
But not all degrees are quite so strict in their requirements. Often you will find that to complete you major (or main) degree you will need to complete a certain selection of classes, but these will not make up a full schedule, or provide enough credits to cover awarding a degree. In this case you will need to study additional classes from a larger pool of topics to gain those extra credits.
The exact requirements will vary between degrees and schools, but there can sometimes be a set of general classes every student will take, a pool of related classes to choose from, or other selection system.
Not an American, just studied there for about a year. There are minimal list of classes you need to take to graduate. In my case I also needed to be in a classroom for a minimum number of hours (excluding covid times), so your guiding teacher try to fill your program with the things that you must take, you should take in a very optimized schedule so all requirements can be met. Beside that, you can take almost any class given that teacher does not object. This is called shadowing and does not count toward your grades but it is free afaik. Also, if you pay for it you can take literally any class, given that you completed the prerequisites, since it is a place of learning and who is to block you from getting it if you paid for it.
I can only really speak for the UK system, but in general the ability to take ‘side’ classes will be very degree dependent.
If you are working towards one of the traditionally ‘heavy’ degrees like medicine or engineering, generally there will be a pretty strict set of requirements before your degree is awarded. So your courses will be chosen for you in order to cover all of those individual topics without any room to change – to miss a class could mean missing a requirement for your chosen degree.
But not all degrees are quite so strict in their requirements. Often you will find that to complete you major (or main) degree you will need to complete a certain selection of classes, but these will not make up a full schedule, or provide enough credits to cover awarding a degree. In this case you will need to study additional classes from a larger pool of topics to gain those extra credits.
The exact requirements will vary between degrees and schools, but there can sometimes be a set of general classes every student will take, a pool of related classes to choose from, or other selection system.
Not an American, just studied there for about a year. There are minimal list of classes you need to take to graduate. In my case I also needed to be in a classroom for a minimum number of hours (excluding covid times), so your guiding teacher try to fill your program with the things that you must take, you should take in a very optimized schedule so all requirements can be met. Beside that, you can take almost any class given that teacher does not object. This is called shadowing and does not count toward your grades but it is free afaik. Also, if you pay for it you can take literally any class, given that you completed the prerequisites, since it is a place of learning and who is to block you from getting it if you paid for it.
Because colleges are businesses and they make more money the longer you’re there.
Did you think they functioned any differently than literally everything else in America?
Because colleges are businesses and they make more money the longer you’re there.
Did you think they functioned any differently than literally everything else in America?
This is why it’s hard to compare education. In the Nordic countries you finish your GE in college before you go to university. In fact you are in Sweden not eligible for university unless you have 12 years of Swedish, 9 years of English, 8 years of maths and 8 years of social science. You are 19 when you’re through those courses.
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