They Say What They Say

I'm doing a Master's degree by coursework at Monash University. In Australia we have different levels of post-grad qualifications, so I already have a Graduate Diploma in Librarianship and the master's is the next step up. We don't have separate grad schools as such in Australia, rather most universities run undergraduate and graduate programs concurrently and many people go on to do their post-grad studies at the same university where they did their undergrad degree.

Also, in Australia your undergraduate qualification is your professional qualification, unless you do something generalist like arts and humanities, or something highly specialised like law or medicine, and in many cases you don't need to go on to further study to be considered professionally qualified. In my case I did do a generalist arts degree and have specialised in library and information management in my post grad studies. And I did my post grad at a different university to my undergrad because my old university doesn't offer the sort of course I wanted to do. Once I've finished this I can, if I wanted to, apply to do a PhD, but who can be bothered? And yes, Casey would be extremely jealous of my post-grad qualifications :~)

However at the university where I work they are about to introduce what we call an American-style academic program, wherein students will complete a three year generalist undergraduate degree and then go on to a two year specialised post-grad for their professional qualification. It's something totally new for Australia and many people are saying it won't work because students will not want to spend five years becoming professionally qualified at my university when it only takes three years somewhere else. However they're banking on the prestige of this place (it's the second-oldest university in Australia and there is a very large amount of cachet associated with having a degree from here) to carry it through. We'll see :~\

There ends a potted explanation of the Australian university system *g*