A unique experience

The degree program I'm doing, master of laws in business and human rights, was offered this year for the first time. I spoke to the head of the program, Ciaran O'Kelly, yesterday and he said the program won't be offered next year. He's really disappointed. There are maybe 10 other LLM programs (criminal justice, corporate governance, human rights, environmental law, etc) and the BHR degree will get folded into one of those.

Queen's is facing some major budget cuts so programs with low enrollment face the ax. I also learned that there will be multiple changes to the curriculum. Gone will be the need to select two optional classes out of 19 outside of your major (I did 18th Century culture and conflict transformation). Also gone will be the need to select three optional classes out of 27 (!) within the legal school. The second half of the year will no longer be divided into two six-week sessions (which doubled the number of assignments). The two courses (8 hours) on methodology and theoretical framework will be blended into one shorter course with one assignment. The two-day series of workshops on dissertation preparation (which were widely panned) will be canceled. It sounds like they tried a lot of experiments this year that failed. Some students I talked to last week want to sue (they are law students after all).

While I had my share of frustrations, many of which I have aired in this blog, I learned something in every class--sometimes lots of things. While the assignments were onerous, I'm not going to learn something in any detail unless I have a deadline and 3,000 words to produce.

Speaking of which, I must get back to my deadline.
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