Before the study

Study programmes

What you can study at the RUB is officially called a "degree programme". This refers to three successive levels, which are internationally comparable and therefore also have English designations. 

The entry level is the goal of obtaining a "Bachelor", a designation that is based on the craft training known since the Middle Ages and means, so to speak, the counterpart to the journeyman's certificate. One can earn a Bachelor of Arts (i.e., of the "arts") or a Bachelor of Sciene (i.e., of the "sciences"). The subjects decide which academic title is awarded. It has become customary to award a B. A., the common abbreviation, for a successfully completed degree in the humanities and some social sciences, and a B. Sc. usually for a completed degree in the natural sciences and engineering.

After the Bachelor's degree, students can choose to enter the world of work or, at the next level, pursue a degree in the form of a "master's degree": a Master of Arts or a Master of Sciene. At the RUB there is also a Master of Education; this is what we call the training for future teachers at grammar schools and comprehensive schools (the only teacher training programme we offer).

Most of our students will go on to professional life with the academic title of Master of Arts, while some pursue the goal of completing a doctorate, i.e. a PhD, at the third stage of their studies. Some subjects have also established a separate course of study for this purpose. In Educational Science, on the other hand, there is only a "structured doctorate" in which the supervising professor takes care of the doctoral student's progress.

Within a degree programme, one studies one "field of study" (or even two of them). In our Bachelor and Master of Arts the subject is called "Educational Science". In the Master of Education, on the other hand, you study "Pedagogy", a name that is identical to the subject taught in the upper secondary school. And then there is the subject "Educational Science," an accompanying course of study for all prospective teachers, regardless of which teaching subjects they study.
Among other things, the aim here is to learn how to teach well.