Inquiry Tier (Level 2000 & 3000) consists of eight courses. Students take interdisciplinary courses, 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 courses on topics of their choice. This part of the curriculum comprises most of our existing courses, and preserves something of the progressive movement towards the Major which has always characterised our structure. While courses are categorised into domains, and indeed into sub-categories within the domains, they differ from the kinds of course that students might take in their major by being based around a concept or an issue, rather than aiming to cover content. Each course 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 a total of 8 Inquiry courses including one ISM but no more than three.  USP students have to ensure that they have at least three H&SS courses and at least three S&T courses.

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 courses in a number of cases. Students going on USP and their faculties’ Student Exchange Programmes, subject to approval, can substitute two courses per semester. Those on a Double Degree Programme, our own Cultural Immersion Programmes in Japan and India, and on NOC (one-year) or NOCSG, can gain exemptions up to four courses 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 courses 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 courses across the three tiers.

Reflection Tier (Level 4000) consists of one course, 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. This course creates guided opportunities for the students to critically reflect, in rigorous, evidence-based ways, on their experiences in USP and NUS.