No, minimum is 8000 and max is 10,000.

I believe it's because I'm only an undergrad student, and it's a dissertation to show our research skills and skills of writing to a word count too. I'm not sure why, as I could probably write about 20,000 on my subject - given a longer length of time, of course! It's also not a sciencey dissertation so there are no surveys and studies to look at, it's purely essay.