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Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on the formulation of residence requirements for the M.Phil. Degree: Notice

3 June 2002

The Council have considered the remarks made by Dr G. R. Evans at the Discussion on 30 April 2002 (Reporter, p. 748) of the Joint Report of the Council and the General Board on the formulation of residence requirements for the M.Phil. Degree (Reporter, p. 649). They have consulted the General Board and have agreed to comment as follows.

There is no question of the University's degree-awarding powers being compromised. The Report does not suggest that the M.Phil. Degree will be an award made jointly with another university but refers to joint courses. The appropriate degree will be awarded by the student's home institution according to that institution's regulations. The procedures for approving candidates for an M.Phil. Degree of the University of Cambridge will be as set out in the General Regulations for the M.Phil. Degree (one-year course) (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 459).

As the Report makes clear, proposals for courses which involve teaching arranged jointly with another university and which entail departure from the normal residence requirements will be made by the appropriate Faculty Board or comparable authority, not by the Cambridge-MIT Institute. The General Board intend, as do the Board of Graduate Studies, to subject such proposals to rigorous scrutiny, particularly in respect of contributions to be made by the partner university. Responsibility for supervision of approved courses rests, as with existing M.Phil. courses, with the relevant Degree Committee which will, in turn, be responsible to the Board of Graduate Studies and the General Board for the effective supervision and delivery of the course and for appropriate examination arrangements.

The role of the Cambridge-MIT Institute will be to facilitate contact between Cambridge institutions and their counterparts at MIT. As the Report makes clear, the intention is to allow for M.Phil. courses jointly taught with a range of appropriate partner universities, in addition to MIT.

With the concurrence of the General Board, the Council are submitting a Grace (Grace 4,p. 906) to the Regent House for the approval of the recommendations set out in the Joint Report.


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Cambridge University Reporter, 12 June 2002
Copyright © 2002 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.