Sociology is offered at honours level on both the Launceston and Hobart campuses.
Honours in sociology is a pathway into some especially interesting and worthwhile careers in the public service and the private sector. Honours is also a pathway into postgraduate research. Honours can be a great opportunity to differentiate yourself from other arts graduates and can lead to greater employment opportunities. If you have a solid record in your sociology units (credits and above), honours is an opportunity to stand out and find interesting and rewarding work.
Undertaking honours in sociology enables you to focus on a specific sociological question that interests you, learn how to find the right evidence to address this question, read the appropriate literature to get a handle on it, and then go out and get the evidence required to say something new about it. These abilities to design a novel research project, gather the evidence, and write an original piece of work on the topic gives you an edge over those who have merely completed units.
In short, our honours program is a one-year intensive traineeship in social research. With expert guidance, you will complete an original social research project from start to finish. Your supervisor is your guide, and your thesis is marked by both internal and external examiners.
The honours program not only is an additional qualification, but also provides a stepping stone to Master of Arts (MA) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degrees.
Show your honours thesis to an employer and watch them picture you differently — as an employee capable of higher-level tasks in their organisation, taking on challenging problems and turning in solutions and options. Employers will know that when the final report is due for the big meeting they can rely on you to deliver — because you have a track record for doing it. That track record starts with honours.
Apart from moving into the university research sector, our graduates work in all sorts of locations across Australia and internationally. Our graduates work in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in health organisations, in government (one was an advisor to Kevin Rudd), in tourism organisations, in criminology, in police and prisons, in private companies, in publicity and marketing, and in market and political research organisations, nationally and internationally.
Choosing to do honours in sociology enables you to identify an area to specialise in; and to an employer this is as valuable as work experience itself. Our honours degrees are validated by external examiners of the very highest calibre. Most important of all, you get all of this with our help.
Honours is where you will receive a lot of hands-on training and where you will do a great deal of learning. Our honours cohorts are small, and you have a lot of individual supervision. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses: in honours we work on both to maximise your potential. People completing honours in sociology tell us that it has changed their life; taken them onto a different, higher level.