2.5-Term Pathway - Foundation Certificate in Humanities - Continue to Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - Modern History and Politics (Placement Year)

Program Description For students who've finished high school but don’t meet the entry requirements for university, a Foundation Certificate can help them gain entry to an undergraduate degree. After completing this pathway option students qualify for progression to the 1st year of an undergraduate degree at the University of Essex.

A student’s course length is determined mainly by their English language level (UKVI IELTS score). Students on all course lengths take a set of common or similar modules to gain a solid base of skills for university. Students taking a course longer than 2 terms, will take additional modules designed to improve one or more of their English language level, academic skills, and basic knowledge of particular subjects.

Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - Modern History and Politics

Students obtain a thorough grounding in the fields of modern history and politics, and will consider how the two disciplines can be integrated. They take an Introduction to Politics module alongside their history modules in the first year, and continue to combine modern history and politics modules in the second and third years. There is a range of relevant options to choose from in both departments and students choose to write their final-year dissertation in either politics or history.

In their history modules students investigate the intersection of the ideas, cultures and economics of different people over the last 200 years of western history. They are introduced to the relationship between today’s ‘modern’ world, which assumes the significance of political liberty, global interdependence and sexuality, and events and ideas which originated in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Always seeking political cause and effect, the course casts light on aspects of life students might never ordinarily connect to politics and government. They investigate the scope of political science as a field of inquiry, and the methods used by political scientists, in order to explore questions concerning both what does occur in politics, and what should occur in politics.