With reduced budgets, space and staff numbers, many Physiology Departments and Faculties of Life Sciences are finding it increasingly more difficult to provide individual laboratory-based research projects for all of their final year students. Furthermore, given that less than 20% of these graduates go into research-based careers, is an individual research project still the “Gold Standard” or should we be offering alternative, non-laboratory based projects more suited to the majority of our graduates final career paths? The QAA Biosciences benchmark statement (QAA 2007) states that final year projects do not necessarily have to be laboratory based, they can be in areas not strictly related to research, for example, in education or in the public understanding of science. This presentation will discuss the range of alternative projects currently being offered both within the Faculty of Biological Sciences at Leeds and at other Institutions including enterprise, educational development , science and society, commercial, and survey projects. Using examples of Science and Society projects (where students create and deliver curriculum-enhancing teaching sessions in local schools) and survey projects (e.g. healthy lifestyle surveys of taxi drivers or middle-aged Rugby League fans), student achievements, the transferable skills developed through these projects and their academic equivalence to laboratory-based research projects will be demonstrated. The practicalities of providing alternative projects will also be discussed as will the benefits, both to the Department and to students. The latter include encouraging students to be enterprising and innovative, and to develop and utilise a different range of transferable skills to those required for laboratory based projects. They therefore enhance student employability and their future career opportunities. As a consequence, they are extremely popular with students. In 2010-11, 26% of Biomedical Sciences students at Leeds opted for an alternative project as their first choice of project.