Royal college for Professional Technology and Oxford college for PH.D Studies boasts considerable strength and breadth in biological sciences with several individual departments offering a range of specialist single or combined Honours degrees.  The Honours programme in Biology is not aligned to any individual discipline but allows the student to select as widely as possible from courses offered at all levels and thus put together a designer degree suited precisely to an individual’s interests and career aspirations.  No other degree in biological sciences allows such flexibility and choice.  Biology degrees are thus constructed by selection of courses offered by the wide range of contributing disciplines.

There are currently two different degree packages available in Honours Biology:

   • Honours Biology
   • Environmental Biology

The degree in Honours Biology allows almost absolute freedom of course choice within the spectrum of biological subjects available, whereas the Environmental Biology degree is somewhat more focused in course choice.

Students from the second year onwards may choose to work with animals.  For the principles underlying such work see the leaflet on Zoology.

 In first year, all students are encouraged to take all three BI courses offered (Organismal Biology, The Cell, Ecology & Environmental Science).  Additional courses are available selected from a very wide choice of science or arts subjects.

In second year, both degree programmes allow considerable choice of subject while Environmental Biology requires Community Ecology (BI2001) and recommends strtongly BI 2503 (Pollution and the Global Environment) to be taken. 

Apart from these restrictions, students are free to choose their remaining courses from the options available, not only in biological sciences.

 In third year, all Biology students choose Level 3 courses from the range offered but some restrictions follow according to the degree programme selected.