Dear List, I'm trying to understand how a U.K. degree might translate into U.S. credits. Some U.K. systems use credit points with a typical masters totaling 180 points. Others, such as the one I'm currently taking, just specifies the number of modules (6 minimum) plus the thesis. This will be important in estimating how close the degree approximates the 30-36 credits minimum for a U.S. masters (and whether I should plan on taking more courses to reach that credit total, if the U.K. degree falls short) If anyone has any ideas, please tell. John
For taught courses a full-time UK student usually takes 60 credits per semester, a US student usually takes around 15 semester hours per semester, so if your taught courses occupied two semesters of full-time study (and looking at the size of a Lancaster dissertation that would seem to be the case), then your taught courses would equate to roughly 30 US semester hours. Rating of US thesis and UK dissertation at Master's level seems to fall outside these simple calculations. A US thesis seems to be rated usually at 6 smester hours for billing purposes, but clearly involves a comparable amount of work to a UK 60 credit dissertation (i.e. at least one semester of full-time work). On this basis a UK Master's degree is equivalent in workload to a US 36 semester hour Master's degree. Malcolm S Jenner
