Study irregular
As irregular study , also free or Individual study is one of the students themselves planned university studies referred, composed of compartments of two or more regular study programs or courses of study.
The higher education laws of different countries permit such a degree and the final diploma if the meaningfulness of the subject combination is evident from the student's application; the extent to which there is a professional need for this is not checked in detail. Irregular studies serve in particular as an opportunity to “invent” new interdisciplinary training courses.
General
In Austria, the study committee whose subjects predominate in the application is responsible for the approval of such an irregular curriculum ; but it can also declare that it is not responsible.
A larger number of similarly worded study applications sometimes leads to a corresponding study attempt or a special deepening of already existing studies. In the 1980s, for example, numerous applications for landscape ecology were submitted and looked after by geodesy (at the Vienna University of Technology) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna until it became a regular course at BOKU. In the meantime, there is often also the form of the "prefabricated" irregular course, which only has a slightly higher bureaucratic burden than normal courses. These are offered by the institutes for certain developing subject areas and are made up of a part of compulsory subjects and a part of which you can choose yourself. With a good attendance and meaningful training, these curricula are then often converted into a regular course of study, with which the university can adapt its offer to the modernization of science without only having to rely on the specialist areas of an appointed lecturer.
Individual diploma course
In Austria , students have the opportunity not only to take the courses offered by the universities . You can also apply for a so-called individual diploma course . It is a complicated special form of studying irregular . However, certain knowledge of study law is required, so that such an application is hardly recommended for a first-year student. Rather, this is an opportunity for the advanced or individualist to bring his study content into line with his interests or professional goals.
Request
If you want to start an individual diploma course, you should submit an application to the responsible administrative office of your university. This must contain a reason why there is a need for the desired individual study and why its contents cannot be implemented within the framework of the existing studies. The reason does not have to be particularly detailed or sophisticated, but should be understandable.
The application must also contain a complete study plan , information on the duration of the study and the academic degree to be achieved . Since a certain knowledge of study law is necessary for the correct design of a curriculum, it is advisable to obtain detailed advice before submitting the application, e.g. B. at student advisory services at the university or the Austrian Students' Union (ÖH) .
After submitting the application must all study groups the content touched disciplines approve the curriculum. Some study commissions only meet once a semester , which should be taken into account when planning the time. Any changes that may be required are generally accepted as a student in order to avoid complications. When designing the curriculum, care should therefore be taken to ensure that as few fields of study as possible have to be used. Furthermore, typical requirements for a “regular” course of study in the relevant fields of study should also be met in one's own curriculum. So it is recommended z. For example, in the case of a linguistic curriculum that is to be approved by the German Studies Study Commission , the introductory lectures in literary studies prescribed for German studies students must also be taken into account, even if their content is irrelevant for the individual diploma course.
At the beginning of the course, the student selects an institute where he will write his diploma thesis , because at this institute he has to take care of all administrative things that arise during the course of the course.
When all discrepancies have been resolved, you will receive a notification of approval, upon presentation of which you can enroll in the individual diploma course from the next semester.
Possibilities and impossibilities
The individual diploma course is of practical importance on the one hand for students who are unable to complete one of the "regular" courses, but on the other hand also to enable courses with such low demand that they are not (no longer) offered regularly (e.g. numismatics or women's studies ).
Since no university institute has to support an individual diploma course, you have to design your study plan in such a way that you can fall back on a sufficient reservoir of courses. It is important not only to ensure that courses with the required content are offered, but also that as an “outsider” you have a real chance of being accepted into them. The interplay of shrinking resources and growing bureaucracy at universities would otherwise be an insurmountable stumbling block.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Individual Studies (IS) ( Memento from July 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) , oeh.univie.ac.a