Program Overview

An International Foundation Year at our International Study Centre prepares you for your degree at Lancaster University. You will focus on English language, university-level study skills, and academic modules that relate to your degree subject.

Supporting your progression to the University
At the International Study Centre, we take every measure to ensure you are supported in your academic journey. Our programmes allow for increased time spent learning, researching and developing your skills. By studying with us, you will benefit from:

• Formal assessments at the end of each term.
• An improved English language module, Academic English Skills, providing greater opportunity for informal assessments and feedback.
• Combining and reducing the number of module assessments allowing more time to prepare.
• A personal tutorial system with a focus on your academic progress at key points of the academic year, creating action plans based on your performance and progession options.

Social Studies
The International Foundation Year in Social Studies leads to a choice of undergraduate degrees in the Faculty of Arts and Social Studies and the Faculty of Science and Technology. To prepare for your degree, you will study core English language modules and subject modules. Degree options include Philosophy, Sociology, and Film.

You will learn about global issues and contemporary events, including business, culture, politics and environment. Other areas of study include advertising, social media, psychology, and theories that relate to media and modern society.

Philosophy
Our Philosophy degree allows you to study and debate important philosophical questions with academics in the field and your peers, such as: How should we live? Is there a God? Are we free to act as we wish if everything is determined by prior causes? Why should we obey the law? Are goodness and beauty objective features of reality? Can science discover all the facts that can be known?

These are some of the many challenging questions you will engage with in a Philosophy degree. At Lancaster, we approach these through contemporary philosophical debate, through engaging with important figures in the history of philosophy –such as Plato, Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche – and via Continental, Analytic, and non-Western philosophical traditions. 

In your first year, you’ll have the opportunity to gain an understanding of some of the core areas of Philosophy by taking the core module ‘Introduction to Philosophy: knowledge and reality’. You will also be strongly encouraged to take the complementary module ‘Moral and Political Philosophy’. In your second and third years, you will be able to choose from a broad range of philosophy modules, including for example: ‘Continental Philosophy; Logic and Language; Aesthetics; Moral Philosophy’. For more modules please see the Politics, Philosophy and Religion department website. There is also the option to engage in one-to-one study with a member of academic staff for your third year dissertation on a specific philosophical topic of interest to you.