MA in English Studies/American Studies

The University of Graz has taught English studies since the nineteenth century, and its Department of English Studies runs the MA in English Studies/American Studies over four semesters and 120 ECTS with English as the language of instruction. Graz's own English-taught study listing confirms that programmes on that list require no German language skills, so this is a genuinely English-medium degree rather than a bilingual one. Graz is Austria's second-largest university and a UNESCO City of Design; the humanities faculty sits in the old town.

The MA is built around strands that students weight to their own interests: literary and cultural studies covering British, American, Irish and postcolonial writing; linguistics, including sociolinguistics, corpus methods, world Englishes and discourse analysis; and cultural and media studies. Seminars are small and discussion-led rather than lecture-driven, students present and publish, and the degree closes with a substantial Master's thesis. Graz also builds in optional 'Master's Plus' modules in communications, media, entrepreneurship, peacebuilding and health humanities. There is real scope for a Sri Lankan student to work on South Asian writing in English, on Sri Lankan English as a variety, or on postcolonial theory with supervision that takes it seriously.

Austria charges non-EU students €726.72 per semester in tuition plus the compulsory students' union contribution of €26.20 — about €1,506 a year, or roughly LKR 520,000. That is a fraction of what an equivalent MA in English costs in the UK, where £20,000-£28,000 a year is standard, and it buys a two-year research degree rather than a nine-month taught one. The real budget line is living in Graz, which is one of the cheaper Austrian cities, and the funds the student residence permit requires you to evidence.

One thing to get right is the deadline. Third-country applicants to a Graz master's without a separate admission procedure apply in a window that runs from 11 May to 8 June for the following winter term — considerably earlier than the general Austrian application window, and earlier than the dates most agents quote. Miss it and you wait a year. Note also that Graz separately participates in a European Joint Master's Programme in English and American Studies with its own portal and its own deadlines; that is a different admissions track from this Graz-only MA.