The Singapore Forum

I feel a bit thick asking this, but I'm going to anyway.

I left school at the end of year 10, aged 15, and am just now finding the time and opportunity (and finances) to pursue a tertiary education. (Basically, I have sweet FA else to do here at the moment. )
I'm studying through Open Univeristies Australia, online, and aiming for a Bachelor of Arts through Macquarie Uni. I think I have decided which "stream" I want to follow,though it's difficult because none seem to offer all of the units I want to cover...which leads me to my question.
Once you have a degree, and you want to do other, extra units, do they actually count for anything?
I don't know if I am expressing myself the right way but what I am getting at is, there are Philosophy, Sociology and Politics units, but more importantly Linguistics units (since that is the field I want to move into), that I really do want to do, but they aren't all covered in the "streams" offered. So if I do them, in addition to those I have to do, for the BA, do I get any kind of recognition for them?
Obviously, I have no understanding of the way these things work, and I know that some of you smaht people would have a much better idea.

Mabel, send a note to the uni; they may be able to help you with it. I should think that it's possible for you to take an alternative subject for your stream, provided that the subject that you want to replace is not the main subject but one of the electives, if you know what I mean. i.e. when I did my Computer Science degree 13 years ago (sheeeeeesh!!!!!), I could replace one of the electives with a foreign language subject, provided that I still took the 2 main business subjects.

It'll vary by Uni and course. In some it may count towards a future Masters, in others it may count towards "joint hounours", in others it may count towards sweet FA!