Teaching psychology in Iceland Urður Njarðvík & Daníel Þór Ólason Faculty of Psychology,...
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Teaching psychology in Iceland Urður Njarðvík & Daníel Þór Ólason Faculty of Psychology, School of Health Sciences University of Iceland Psychology education
Teaching psychology in Iceland Urur Njarvk & Danel r lason
Faculty of Psychology, School of Health Sciences University of
Iceland Psychology education in Iceland Psychology has a long
prehistory but a relatively short modern history in Iceland. From
the founding of the University of Iceland (in 1911) psychology was
taught as part of an introductory course required of all first year
students. In 1971 a BA degree program in psychology was established
at the University of Iceland. A BA program in psychology is now
also available in two other universities, University of Akureyri
(from 2003) and University of Reykjavik (from 2009). Only
University of Iceland offers graduate programs in psychology. In
all three universities are admission requirements having completed
high school diploma and tuition fees are only required at the
University of Reykjavk (approximately 1.950 Euros). Faculty of
Psychology at the University of Iceland Psychology was established
as a faculty within the School of Health Sciences in 2008.
Currently, psychology is among the most popular subjects at the
university. At the moment the faculty includes approximately 600
students in the BS program and around 70 reading for professional
or masters degrees. We offer three different graduate programs: A
MS in Research in Psychology; a professional degree (cand.psych)
and a MS program in Social- and Work psychology. A PhD program was
founded in 2006. Currently the academic staff is 12 so the
teacher/student ratio is high or 1/56. The BS program includes 180
ECTS. The degree consists of: theories and foundation (26 ECTS),
research methods and statistics (28 ECTS), core courses with
assignments (86 ECTS), electives specialized or general (24 ECTS)
and a BS thesis (16 ECTS). In our BS program we teach all main
subjects of psychology including physiological, developmental,
social, abnormal, perception, cognitive, personality, psychometrics
and behavioral psychology. Within our core courses students are
required to do lab exercises or small research projects and this
training concludes with an independent research project as part of
the BS thesis in the third year. The challenge of increasing number
of students The policy of the University of Iceland is to admit all
students with high-school diplomas, thus giving everyone a chance
to try their subject of choice. As can be seen in Figure 1 below,
psychology has been a very popular choice in the past 20 years and
the number of new students is steadily climbing. Next Fall we have
over 400 students enrolled which is a record number and makes the
course one of the most popular on campus. To meet the challenge of
this large number of students the department requires students to
pass Introduction to Psychology in order to proceed to the Spring
semester and have a GPA of 6,0 (on a 10 pt scale) in order to
proceed to the second year. About 60-65% of the students receive a
passing grade in Introduction to Psychology in the first semester
and about 50% of the initial group of students proceed to the
second year. This very high drop out rate is probably best
explained by the policy of admitting everyone which prevents us
from preselecting students into the program. Figure 2 shows the
number of students graduating with a BS in psychology from 1974 to
2009. Although the numbers for graduates are considerably lower
than for new students, the number of graduates is steadily
increasing as well. Career opportunities Students who have finished
the professional degree (cand.psych) pursue various careers as
psychologists within the health and school system. Other graduate
students (MS in research or social and work psychology) typically
work within the private or public sectors, for example in human
resource departments. BS graduates work in various disciplines both
in private and public sectors. It should be noted that due to the
financial situation in Iceland employment is not as widely
available as before. This also explains to some extent the recent
increase in our student numbers. Further information: Dr. Urur
Njarvk (email: [email protected]) Dr. Danel r lason (email: [email protected])
Figure 1. Number of students enrolled in Introduction to Psychology
from 1990-2010 Figure 2. Number of students graduating with a BS in
Psychology from 1974-2009