Changes in society are creating new requirements for life-long learning, retraining, and greater variety in course offerings to supplement degrees and graduate courses. The diploma courses are a response to these changing needs, enabling people to undertake a selection of undergraduate units within a single discipline or field.

The objectives of the diploma courses are to enable:

• mature-age students to obtain a university qualification in an area of special interest, without previous study at a university;
• graduates to obtain qualifications in a new area of interest, or to update previous qualifications, through further study at the undergraduate level.

None but there may be prerequisites or levels of assumed knowledge for individual subjects particularly science and language subjects.