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The focus of the research was students' perceptions of whether joint honours degrees represented a sound student learning experience and led to good academic and employability outcomes. In this minority mode of study for the United Kingdom, students study two academic subjects, rather than the more usual single subject. The qualitative methodology followed was a thematic analysis of self-administered questionnaire data, collected from joint honours students at four English universities in the United Kingdom. The principal results were that the students experienced difficulties in fitting into the two communities of learning for their respective subjects; in being adequately supported; in disparities in teaching, learning and assessment between their two subjects, and in a high workload. The major conclusion was that although the students perceived their learning experiences to have value by virtue of having studied two subjects, a number of issues stymied their achieving the best learning experience possible.

The motivation for this research was to explore the lived experience of joint honours students, for whom there is little in the literature at present. The objective was to critique primary data collected from the students via a self-administered questionnaire. This phenomenological methodology permitted and unfiltered view of the students' learning experiences to be explored. The research is based on a cross-university student survey, conducted over a period of six months. The online survey, which ran between June 2016 and January 2017, involved self-administered questionnaires designed to collect information on the learning experience of students on joint honours degrees, from four different Universities in England. A key finding of this paper is the need for university administrators to pay particular attention to joint honours degrees in their portfolios in the light of the growing and significant number of students opting to study these degrees and the general tendency amongst universities to focus attention on single honours degrees. Particular areas of concern are highlighted where students on joint honours degrees feel improvements in their educational experience could be made. The future scope of the survey results are discussed in

Abstract-The early 21st century has witnessed the rise in violent extremism with groups such as Al Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the Middle East, the Boko Haram in West Africa, and Al Shabaab in East Africa. The activities of these and other non-state armed groups have created a general state of panic and fear that is spreading beyond their areas of operation to other parts of the political world. Rather than diminishing the influence of these groups, the states' counter extremism strategies seem to be further fuelling the extremism and creating new waves of violence that threatens global security and undermines the very essence of our collective wellbeing. This paper examines the socioeconomic and political environment in which these armed groups have thrived and poses the question as to whether the failure of politics and development are to blame for the rise of extremism. The paper proposes a new approach to combating extremism that involves re-connecting people with politics and development. The basic contention of this paper is that there has been a failure of the state to satisfy the wellbeing of its citizens. The paper provides an explanation of, but by no means a justification of, the use of violent extremism in the early 21st century.