More NUS students can graduate with honours degree

SINGAPORE — The National University of Singapore (NUS) will be increasing its proportion of students graduating with an honours degree.

This change will impact students in three faculties — business, arts and social sciences and science — where 10 to 15 per cent more of these undergraduates can now get a shot of entering the honours year. The small cohort of about 100 nursing students under the medical school will also be part of this change. Previously, students who do not meet the cut-off grade at their third year will graduate with a degree certificate.

Announced by NUS provost Tan Eng Chye in a media briefing on Tuesday (July 22), he noted that this effectively translates to about 400 to 500 more students across the business, arts and social sciences and science faculties. To graduate with a basic honours degree, students also now need to achieve between a cumulative grade point of 3 and 3.49 instead of having to achieve at least a 3.2. In their third year, students will also only need to accumulate a 3.2 grade, down from 3.5, to qualify for the honours year.

NUS is currently the only autonomous university here that does not practise a direct four-year honours programmes for its courses, only doing so for its engineering, computing and design schools.

Professor Tan explained that this change was due to the better quality of incoming students, and hopes to help students cope in the changing future work environment.

As a “better way of recognising students’ accomplishments”, the NUS will also be changing the nomenclature of its degree classification, said Prof Tan.

Following some major US universities, a first class honours will now be awarded as honours (highest distinction), second class upper awarded as honours (distinction) and second class lower as honours (merit). Some local universities, like the Singapore Management University, also follow the American system but award degrees in its Latin name, like Summa Cum Laude (with highest distinction).

These changes will be applicable to new batches of students starting this academic year as well as the 2012 and last year’s cohorts.