OVERVIEW: Australian and New Zealand education

One of the first things that will strike you about Australian and New Zealand universities is just how similar they are, in many ways, to universities in the UK or Ireland.

What will seem the same?

The number of similarities isn’t so surprising when you consider both the Australian and New Zealand education systems are modelled on the British system. As a result, lots of things will be familiar, including the names of academic qualifications – Bachelors, Masters, PhDs, and so on – and the amount of time they take to complete.

The methods of teaching used at Australian and New Zealand universities are also very similar. Bachelors and Masters degrees by coursework are taught by a mix of lectures and seminars, with practical tutorials, clinical placements and fieldwork where required. As in the UK and Ireland, as a university student you will need to be self-motivated and organised about your workload. Lectures and tutorials need to be backed up by independent reading, which you’re expected to organise yourself.

The universities also look similar. Australia and New Zealand both have different types of universities – some are self-contained campuses, located on the edge of a city within their own grounds, others are made up of several campuses spread throughout a city. Campuses often feature a mixture of architecture, depending on when the university was founded – the older institutions in Australia and New Zealand were established in the mid- to late-1800s, so are made up of a mixture of period and contemporary buildings, while another group was set up in the 1960s and 1970s, so are more modern in appearance. Whatever their look, all have all of the facilities and features that you’d expect to find on a modern, well-equipped campus – libraries, shops, computer rooms and learning spaces, bookshops, entertainment venues, bars and cafés as well as clubs and societies catering for many different tastes and interests.

 

What will be different?

Despite all these reassuring similarities, however, there are a few key differences to be aware of.

One of the biggest is the structure of undergraduate degrees. In New Zealand and Australia, degrees tend to be more flexible than their UK or Irish counterparts. When you enrol on a general degree course – such as a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Commerce – you select a ‘major’. This is the subject you’ll graduate in, so, for example, a Bachelor of Arts in international relations, or a Bachelor of Commerce in marketing.

In order to meet the requirements of your major – which is what makes you eligible to graduate – you must complete a set amount of courses in that subject. This amount will vary from university to university, but will generally be around two-thirds of your total degree study. Students concentrate on their major more and more as they progress through a degree – in the first year, only a third of your courses might come from your major, but, by the time your final year comes around, the majority of your courses will be from the subject you’re majoring in.

But if only two-thirds of courses come from your major, what else do you study? This is where the flexibility comes in.

Having met the requirements of your major, you’re then able to pick ‘electives’ – courses from other subjects. These are usually taken in other subjects available within your degree – so if you were a Bachelor of Arts student, you’d probably take electives from other humanities subjects – but they can also come from other degrees taught at the university.

This means that you’re able to choose courses from a wide range of subjects, particularly in your first year. So you could be majoring in history, but also taking courses in English literature, or international relations; or majoring in zoology, but also doing courses in marine science or ecology.

If you want to study two subjects equally – history and history of art, or zoology and marine science – you can take a double major. This means you’ll graduate in both (for example, a Bachelor of Science in zoology and marine science). A double major, however, means you can’t take electives, as meeting the requirements of a double major will take up all your courses. A double major degree often has much the same structure as a double degree at a UK universities – it just goes by a slightly different name.

The biggest advantage to this system is its flexibility. It means that you don’t have to know exactly what you want to do before university. It’s quite normal to start off majoring in history, but end up graduating in international relations. This is good for anyone not completely sure of what they want to do, as well as those planning to study a subject not taught at schools, so who don’t know quite what to expect, or whether they will enjoy it. 

 

Postgraduate qualifications

Australian and New Zealand universities offer a wide range of postgraduate qualifications. Many are familiar – Masters and PhDs – others are less so, such as Graduate Diplomas and Honours.

Graduate Diplomas are year-long courses often used as transition courses for students who want to study a subject at Masters that they don’t have an undergraduate degree in – for example, someone with a Bachelors in English literature wanting to study an MA in history might be asked to do a Graduate Diploma in history before going on to the MA. Graduate Diplomas can also be professional training courses. A good example is the Graduate Diploma of Education, a one year course designed to train graduates as teachers, very similar to the UK’s PGCE course.

Honours degrees are postgraduate qualifications in their own right in Australia and New Zealand, rather than a class of mark as they are in the UK. There, Honours is a year long course taken after the successful completion of a Bachelors degree, usually only open to high-achieving students. Honours can, in some cases, be the first year of a Masters qualification; in others it’s often the pathway to PhD.

Graduate and Postgraduate Diplomas and Honours require one year of study, PhDs usually three. In New Zealand Masters courses are two years long, but in Australia they can be one, one and a half, or two years. The duration depends on subject, but also often on the applicant’s background. They can be taught by coursework, research, or a combination of the two.

To be eligible for any kind of postgraduate study in Australia or New Zealand, UK and Irish students must have a Bachelors degree from a recognised UK or Irish university.