ATL

Degrees 'cannot be judged on contact hours'

02 September 2010

Degrees should not be judged on the number of contact hours they involve.

This is according to third year chemistry student Robert Woolfson, who claimed that any student that is prepared to engage properly "will get good value for money".

Writing for the Guardian, he noted that last year his course involved between 15 and 20 hours of contact each week.

"By comparison arts students, if they are lucky, get six to eight hours of lectures, seminars and tutorials a week. Instead of labs and workshops, they get extensive reading lists," Mr Woolfson commented.

However, he noted that arts students still gain a great deal from their degrees and get a platform for their ideas and opinions.

"Once arts students have worked through their reading list, they're going to have ideas about what they've read and how these ideas fit into the grand scheme of things," he added.

Writing for the same publication last week, politics student Davina Kesby said she has become increasingly frustrated by the wide variation in contact hours between degrees.