Handbook

Learn More About Breadth

Breadth is one of the most exciting aspects of the University's New Generation degrees, allowing you to choose 25 per cent of your subjects from other areas than the ones that make up the core disciplines of your degree.

Why study breadth?

By studying subjects beyond your core disciplines, you have the chance to develop different skills, expand your knowledge, learn complementary ways of thinking about issues and problems, and challenge your perceptions.

Breadth is an opportunity to:

What are the rules?

Although each New Generation degree has its own rules and there are a few exceptions (see 'Exceptions' below), the following are common across all of them:

* Bachelor of Engineering students can take between 37.5 points (three subjects) and 50 points (four subjects) of breadth study depending on their stream.

The rules or requirements for breadth study in each of the New Generation undergraduate degrees are basically the same. The links below will tell you more about which subjects you can choose and the number of breadth subjects you must take.

Breadth requirements for:

What subjects can I do as breadth?

You can do most subjects outside the core discipline areas of your degree as breadth. This includes subjects taught by other faculties and departments as well as specially-developed University Breadth Subjects (UBS) (see below for more on UBS).

Example - Core disciplines in the Bachelor of Arts

Core disciplines in the Bachelor of Arts include (among other things): History, Politics, Languages, Classics, Creative Writing, Gender Studies etc. For a Bachelor of Arts student, anything that falls outside these core disciplines is a potential breadth subject, eg - Earth Sciences, Accounting, Information Technology, Systems Design, etc.

Example - Core disciplines in the Bachelor of Science

Core disciplines in the Bachelor of Science include (among other things): Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Physics, etc. For a Bachelor of Science student, any subject that falls outside these core disciplines is a potential breadth subject, eg - Languages, Music, Design, Education, etc.

There are hundreds of options for each degree! Use the breadth search database to help identify the subjects available to you.

What are "University Breadth Subjects"?

"University Breadth Subjects" (UBS) have been specially developed for the Melbourne Model and examine current critical issues using techniques and approaches from multiple disciplines.

Most subjects at the University are taught by a single school or department and focus on a specific discipline. UBS are a little different as they use multiple disciplines from across school, department and even faculty boundaries to study the topics presented.

All "University Breadth Subjects" can contribute to your breadth studies and are available to all New Generation degree students (including Engineering).

To see a list of the current UBS, use the breadth search database. Each time you search, the UBS for the year level(s) requested will be displayed before any other results.

A note about timetabling: all University Breadth Subjects are scheduled to avoid clashes with most other subjects of that year level. However, this means that it is only possible to take one University Breadth Subject of a year level per semester (as they are scheduled to run simultaneously).

Exceptions

Exceptions to note:

More information

For more information about how to choose your breadth subjects, click here.

For information about breadth sequences and clusters, click here.

For FAQs about breadth, click here.

To find out where to go for help, click here.

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