Academic Differences That I've Noticed While Abroad

Now that 3 weeks of the academic term is already over, being back at UBC still seems unnatural to me. I wanted to write this blog post because yesterday, I found out one of my classmates in my CPSC 404 class is actually an exchange student. He mentioned that UBC seems to be difficult compared to his home institute. I thought I would write some thoughts about what I have noticed between the UK university education system (based on the University of Birmingham) vs the Canadian university education system (based on the University of British Columbia).

- Most UBC classes have 3 lecture hours a week and sometimes more with labs and tutorials. In Birmingham, most classes only have 2 lecture hours a week and sometimes labs and tutorials. I think the difference between 3 and 2 lecture hours makes a huge difference. The time table of a UK student is usually much less busier other than med school students.

- Birmingham students all live quite close to the university. All within walking distance. UBC is a total commute school and that is not existent in the UK. Not only do Birmingham students have way more time than UBC students, but they also look way more rested, less sleepy in class and less stressed out. The social events created by the Guild of Students are very well attended.

- No midterms in the UK. 80% finals! The finals are worth so much to lessen the possibility of students cheating on assignments. Without midterms, I see students less stressed out in trying to cramp study for midterms in the middle of the term.

- Birmingham students are extremely involved in sports. Almost everyone is playing a sport because most sports have 1st, 2nd and 3rd teams. Everyone that is keen for a sport, will almost have an opportunity to play. The University is also very supportive of club sports in providing facility unlike UBC.

- Computer Science assignments at Birmingham required less research on my own time but this can be highly bias because I only took 2 classes that had programming assignments. When I mean less research, they provided a lot of example code that turned the assignments into a lot of copying and pasting and tweaking to work.

- Tuitions were similar for domestic students of both Canada/UK before England removed the tuition cap. Previously, it was 3000 pounds per year and it is now a whooping 9000 pounds.

- Degrees in England are only 3 years in length where as Canada is 4. However in England, you declare your major when you enter into the university and stay in that program. Switching between programs is hard and so when students need or want to switch, they will drop out of the university. This is huge difference in my opinion. Because of the 3 years in length, students take almost no electives outside of their major and students do not study in quite as much breadth as a UBC CS student. For example, the Operating Systems in C/C++ (an excellent class IMO) is an elective for a third year student and students can graduate without learning C or C++. (Shocking!)

- Students need to graduate in 3 years. I don't know exactly what happens if you don't graduate in time by failing a class. Students at UBC can take up to 7 years to do their undergrad degree and take terms off as they wish.

- UBC CS students seem way more prepared for the industry upon graduation than the students in Birmingham. Most UBC CS students do co-op or at least some internships on their own. Birmingham doesn't have a co-op program but students can take a gap year to work a year in the industry. Not that many students are in that program though.

- All exams in first and second term are in April/May at Birmingham. This means massive cramming in April to study for all classes. Classes were out by the first week of December and so there is almost a month break for Christmas. They take Christmas very seriously there!

All in all, I find Birmingham students way more relaxed, unstressed and more so enjoying their university career than UBC students. Without the massive commute, less classes and lighter homework load, I enjoy my university life way more in Birmingham than I did 4 years at UBC. However, I feel that I definitely learn more at UBC!