The Masters Project: third year or fourth year?

A friend of mine recently told me that the MPharm at the University of Central Lancashire incorporates the compulsory Masters project into the third year. At first, I was amazed. I had never thought of or imagined the project being in any other year but the fourth. Then I was jealous; I don't wish to complain (although I might be failing) but this sounds a bit like the negative marking issue.

Here, I refer you to a blog I wrote on negative marking last year. Negative marking is employed in some universities and not others. Some would argue that this made the MPharm in those universities that did employ this "harder", with students at a few universities having a whole mark deducted for a wrong answer.

Here at Manchester, the fourth year is worth a hefty 70% of the degree, with the third year worth 20%, the second year 10% and the first year worth nothing. With the fourth year project taking up a pretty significant amount of time as well, I can't help but think that a great burden would be lifted from the student if the fourth year project was instead conducted in the third year, especially at universities where the contribution of the fourth year to the degree is very large.

Some may say that this could make the MPharm too easy; after all, if the third year is only worth 20%, a student may be able to "prioritise" one thing, exams or the project, over another, which wouldn't really be possible during fourth year. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for students having to work hard to achieve high marks. The point I am making here is the same as the one in my blog about negative marking; surely the GPhC, as they control the content of MPharm programmes in the UK, ought to further standardise the MPharm to include things like the aforementioned across the whole country to ensure that students at one university are not at a "disadvantage", so to speak, compared to students at another?

It doesn't make sense for absolutely everything to be the same on each programme, of course...with everything the same, the value of a particular university over another may be undermined. It is with major issues that may have a big impact on what class of degree a student could obtain, such as negative marking or the work involved each year, that I believe should be more or less the same across all MPharm courses.

What do you think?