Foundation Tier -- Level 2000 -- contains three modules. The first of these, Writing and Critical Thinking, has long been a mainstay of the USP curriculum, encouraging students to engage in a complex and sophisticated way with the texts that they read, and to produce complex and inflected texts of their own. While the module has relevance to all students, its focus on the academic essay means that it develops verbal reasoning skills most often associated with the humanities and social sciences but nonetheless of broad relevance and importance. The second foundation module, Quantitative Reasoning Foundation (QRF), introduces students to the basics of quantitative reasoning, defined broadly as "the way in which we can use numbers to provide evidence for our arguments." It does so by examining a specific substantive topic whose claims can be assessed quantitatively. Such substantive topics include: evaluating our individual eco-footprint (UQF2101E), quantifying nuclear risk (UQF2101G) or environmental quality (UQF2101I), and assessing the relationship between democracy and war (UQF2101H). The third foundation module is the University Scholars Seminar. Organized as a two semester lecture series, students will be introduced to key ideas, thinkers, and paradigm shifts over the course of five intellectual periods: Pre-Enlightenment, the Enlightenment, Post-Enlightenment, Modernity, and Post-modernity. Each period maps the shifting social, political, and material contexts in which these questions have been raised, challenged, and raised again. The aim is to introduce students to a history of intellectual enquiry that is neither singular nor complete but contesting and contestable.

Inquiry Tier -- Level 2000 & 3000 -- consists of eight modules. Students take interdisciplinary modules, with a small class size, in two domains, Humanities & Social Sciences (H&SS), and Sciences & Technologies (S&T). The overall goal of the second tier, as its name suggests, is to promote interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary inquiry, so that students can make intellectual connections outside of their majors. The curriculum is thus designed to encourage students in broad intellectual inquiry beyond their chosen majors, and incorporates the requirement to take at least one (and maximum of three) independent study modules on topics of their choice. This part of the curriculum comprises most of our existing modules, and preserves something of the progressive movement towards the Major which has always characterised our structure. While modules are categorised into domains, and indeed into sub-categories within the domains, they differ from the kinds of module that students might take in their major by being based around a concept or an issue, rather than aiming to cover content. Each module will be taken by students from a variety of faculties, and thus will inevitably acquire an interdisciplinary perspective through interactive pedagogy.

All USP students will take four modules in the H&SS and four modules in the S&T domains, including one ISM but no more than three.

We encourage students to have international experience, and indeed we aim to have all of our students undergo some form of study, whether formal or informal, outside Singapore. We thus allow the substitution of modules in a number of cases. Students going on USP and their faculties’ Student Exchange Programmes, subject to approval, can substitute two modules per semester. Those on a Double Degree Programme, our own Cultural Immersion Programmes in Japan, China, and India, and on NOC or iLEAD, can gain exemptions up to four modules in total. In each case, we consider that the intellectual experiences the students undergo, whether broadening across disciplines, cultural facility in a new academic environment entrepreneurship, partially fulfil the goals of the second tier of modules in stimulating broad-based inquiry. In order to preserve the sense of the Scholars Programme as a learning community, however, we impose an overall requirement of eight USP modules across the three tiers.

Reflection Tier -- Level 4000 -- consists of one module, the senior seminar. It is designed to bring students together towards the end of their degree to reflect on the conditions of their own disciplinary knowledge and the assumptions developed in disciplinary framework to approach discourse and ideas with. Taught by a multidisciplinary faculty of three to four, this senior class examines a theme from several disciplinary perspectives. Students are challenged to critically read and productively respond to assumptions, evidence and methods from sciences, social sciences and humanities. Themes on “Future Times” and “Violence” have been examined. Assignments include weekly blog, ePortfolio, and eMagazine contribution.