Course would be possible, you can use CourseInstance for the different instances that occur every 1 or 2 semesters, to represent different start times of the same programme which you can sign up for. The problem seems to me though that a programme isn't really a course, it's bigger and more complex.

Hello @runningnumbers . I helped add the Course structures to schema.org. It's relevant to know that I am British and in the UK we often use Course to mean what in the US is a Program (as well as as often using it to mean stand-alone courses -- language is messy). So it is deliberate that the definition of Course is "a sequence of one or more educational events and/or creative works which aims to build knowledge, competence or ability of learners". This was intended to be broad enough to encompass anything from a multi-year educational program to a day-long course.

I didn't anticipate that so many would be uncomfortable using a class with the name Course for what they call a Program, even where the definition fits (hopefully). But one result of this mismatch in expectations was that EducationalOccupationalProgram got added for a Google project. I don't know whether that project ever came to anything beyond some pages on the Google site. It is useful in adding in some of the broader things that can be part of a program (placements etc., though to my mind these are included as educational events); and they added some useful properties like application deadlines; but it does have the issues you mention.

I do not know how data consumers (e.g. Google Search) would handle any data that you provide with either Course or EducationalOccupationalProgram in practice, but in principle there is nothing stopping you from using both types on a single entity that matches both definitions.

Hello @philbarker
Thank you for the reply! So in your opinion there's no downsides to using Course? Also can you clarify what you mean by "using both types"? Do you mean simultaneosly?

Yes, simultaneously, for what has been called a "multi-typed entity" There are some downsides around tooling that doesn't handle array values for @type in JSON-LD (or similar)