United Kingdom and Ireland
The M.Sc. is typically a "taught" postgraduate degree, involving lectures, examination, and a short project. Taught masters programmes involve 1 or 2 years of full-time study (or the equivalent period part-time). Some universities also offer research MSc programmes, where a longer project or set of projects is undertaken full-time.
Until recently, both the undergraduate and postgraduate masters degrees were awarded without grade or class (like the class of an honours degree). Nowadays however, masters degrees are normally classified into the categories of Pass and Distinction, with some universities also using an intermediate Merit category.
The more recent M.Sci degree, now offered by UK institutions, is an abbreviation for Master in Science. It is equally reputed and acknowledged by employers within the UK and internationally. According to the UK National Qualifications Framework, an M.Sci. and other such masters degrees (M.Phys., M.Chem. etc.) are termed integrated masters and are classed as level 7 qualifications—the same level as a Master of Science or Master of Arts degree. In the final year, students enrolled in an M.Sci degree must undertake the same modules, as well as a research dissertation, just like someone enrolled in a postgraduate MA or MSc degree. Many research universities are now demanding M.Sci. degrees for entry to Ph.D. research programmes.
This education pattern in United Kingdom is also followed in Hong Kong SAR and in many Commonwealth Nations such as Malta, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Read more about this topic: Master Of Science
Famous quotes containing the words united, kingdom and/or ireland:
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or, in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)