22nd June 2010, 10:08 AM
Quote:Of course it wouldn't be as lucrative for colleges and universities......(and I guess that answers why it isn't more widespread)...More that it has the potential to be an organisational and financial nightmare. A department could find itself in the position of turning students away (effectively losing money in the process, especially if those students never return) one year, then having too few students to pay the bills the next. In practice, the best way to avoid that risk would be to dramatically increase class sizes so the averaging effect of large student numbers irons out some of the interyear variation, meaning the yearly finances would be less variable--at the expense of lowering teaching standards through large class sizes.
And I say this as someone who thinks modular NAmerican style degrees would be a vast improvement on the UK locked-into-your-preset-course-of-study system.