Riverbend University

Riverbend University is a teaching university with faculties in engineering, computing, the sciences and business. It runs a semester system on a four-year undergraduate degree, with postgraduate and doctoral study in the disciplines where its research groups sit.

What we set out to do

Most of what frustrates a student is administrative, not academic: not knowing what a grade was built from, queueing to discover a fee, finding out in the third week that a registration never went through. Riverbend is organised so that the record is open to the person it belongs to. Every student can see their registration, their attendance, the components behind each grade, and every charge on their account, at the moment it is entered rather than at the end of term.

How study is organised

Academic year

Two regular semesters, Fall and Spring, with an optional summer session for repeat and improvement courses.

Credit load

12 to 18 credit hours in a regular semester. The registration system checks the load, the prerequisites and the seats available before a registration is accepted.

Grading

Letter grades on a 4.0 scale, computed from component marks that are visible per course. Term GPA and cumulative GPA are built from those grades.

Attendance

A minimum of 75% attendance in a course is required to sit its final examination. Excused absences are recorded with their reason.

Academic structure