A number of standard Humanities courses which run in the first or second semester are also offered in the Summer and Winter Terms. These are referred to as 'Third-Term' courses: credit-bearing courses offered to students to support them in meeting the curriculum requirements of their degrees.  They are referred to as ‘Third Term’ as they are offered outside the regular first and second semester structure, usually over the winter or summer vacation periods.

General information

• Due to the intense and highly compressed nature of these courses, students may register for only one Third-Term course at a time.
• NSFAS does not fund Third Term courses. UCT has a small fund for third term courses, but will limit awards to students in their final year of study for whom the third term course will save them a semester of registration.
• Third Term courses should not be confused with UCT short courses, which are not credit-bearing courses.
• Summer and Winter Term course descriptions are listed in the relevant department's entry in the Humanities faculty handbook, but this does not mean that all courses which exist in summer or winter format will necessarily run in any given year. For an updated list of available courses in the current year, please see the class numbers booklet, or below.
• A summer or winter term course may be cancelled in the week or two before the course starts, if insufficient numbers of students sign up for it. If this happens, the faculty office will remove the course from your transcript and will email you to let you know of the cancellation; if you are signing up for an elective, i.e. you don't need a specific course, you could choose a different course in place of the cancelled one and add it by the usual change of curriculum process.

 2023 Summer and Winter term dates

2023 Summer and Winter term Courses offered

Sign up for a course

• To sign up for a third term course, you may either do so during your annual registration or will need to complete a Change of Curriculum form and submit to a Peoplesoft service request in order to add the relevant course.
• You can apply for Summer and Winter term courses until the second day of the course. The start dates for third term courses are also published on the main UCT website calendar.
• You can drop a summer or winter term course by change of curriculum service request for a full fee refund and transcript removal up until the Friday of the first week in which the course runs.