摘要：In order to prepare students for entry into a job market that is rapidly evolving, 3-year undergraduate degrees thatwere once common in North America and parts of East Asia and South America have been replaced with 4-yearundergraduate degrees. In Australia, the University of Sydney recently announced a radical reorganisation of theircourse offerings with an emphasis on the restructuring of their 3-year degrees into 4-year degrees. Noting thatonly a ‘relatively small fraction’ of students left their university after completing a 3-year degree, by embeddingan honours degree within a 4-year undergraduate degree not only would the university be able to better preparestudents for postgraduate study but they would also be able to substantially reduce the number of degrees thatthey have to offer. In South Africa, a similar debate is taking place at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Insome disciplines, such as Engineering, a 4-year qualification has for many years been the norm. In the Collegeof Management Sciences, students have the option to complete a 3-year undergraduate degree (which is thenfollowed by an additional year of honours study) or a 4-year degree. When faced with this choice, students in thatcollege seem to prefer enrolling for a 4-year degree.
