5 Comments
Mar 29Liked by John Quiggin

A small matter unrelated to the main focus of the post.

You use the phrase "...while working on my undergraduate honours thesis...". I have long been of the view that, in order to attempt an Honours program, one already needs to have completed the Bachelor Degree (i.e. have become eligible to graduate) and therefore the Honours program is postgraduate rather than undergraduate. The exceptions to this are programs in which there is no plain Bachelor degree, just a (usually four) year program culminating in a Bachelor degree with Honours.

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As an administrative matter, universities hold that this incorrect and treat honours years as part of undergraduate, but I take it you are making the claim that universities are incorrect in this regard?

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I am saying that it makes no academic sense to classify a program as "undergraduate" if one has to be a graduate in order to enrol in it.

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That's true. Just don't tell university administrators, they'll start charging postgrad coursework fees.

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Succinct, reflective. Well said.

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