Buckingham University (private) 3 yr courses over 2 yrs - any experience ?

[mumblechum1]

I read something recently about Buckingham University, which is a private university, due to go from one of the most expensive in terms of tuition fees to one of the cheapest (£11.5k per annum, but 3 yr courses are condensed into 2 yrs, so total cost £23k rather than £27k for 3 yr course at £9k pa).

So, it looks q attractive, and they do a Politics and International Relations course which is close to what ds wants to do in Nottingham, but wondering if anyone has any experience of Buckingham, the pros and cons, dos and don'ts?

Thanks in advance.

No direct experience but they seem to top the NSS / student feedback tables - so must be doing something right (although knowing how NSS figures can be manipulated and be bafflingly at odds with reality, I reserve judgement!).

Students will be happy if they get wine very good marks for everything

As an employer, I would be quite suspicious of someone with a two-year degree.

It was established by some highly respectable academics though Honeyand Haycorns and I suspect other Unis are watching closely and may follow suit. It might not work for every subject perhaps. I think they do it by working all year round rather than having the summer off - but could be wrong!

I would be wary as cost cutting is happening at all levels in academia. More students, less staff, poor contact hours and therefore not a good experience or degree at the end of it. NSS is not a very good indicator of anything as an academic I would say go with the league tables/rankings.

I agree that other universities may well follow suit, but they would lose credibility internationally if they did. A lot of people already wonder how we can fit our degrees into 3 years in the uk, when it takes 4 years in most other countries.

I get that they work more intensively and have fewer holidays on these shorter courses, but I spent a lot of the summer reading and working on my dissertation when I was a student - not sure where they fit this extra work in. I also used to get holiday jobs etc, and that work experience was hugely important in terms of my future employability.

I'm not saying that the shorter degrees are necessarily less valuable, but as a recruiter, personally, I would be quite sceptical.

Well maybe, if you are doing lots of other activities and socialising etc you need three years. But I did my first degree as a mature student and after working for quite a few years beforehand I found the pace leisurely and protracted - I could have easily done it in two years tbh and I had small children, didnt do Uni work through the holidays and still came top of my year. If you are not interested in any of the other stuff but qualifying and moving on to further study or a job, two year degrees may be very attractive now, especially for mature students.

I wouldnt want my Uni to do it though or I would never get to do research!

Perhaps some 18 year olds need the three years to mature and knuckle down - so maybe not the best choice for them

Hmm, thanks for all the feedback. Will also go over the league tables. I'm just approaching it from a skinflint point of view (we're funding his uni expenses and two years accom etc did sound rather attractive!)

I agree that the shorter degrees may be a good option for mature students with a bit of work experience behind them. For an 18yo straight out of school, though, I think they do need to work and get involved in extra-curricular stuff - if they don't manage to acquire and demonstrate some real transferable skills, chances are, they will be unemployable by the end of the course. It also depends on what you think university is about - is it about the overall experience, and the personal growth and development that goes with that, or is it just about the qualification that you get at the end? And if it's just the latter, then honestly speaking, how useful is that degree going to be anyway?

To some extent, I guess it depends on the university and the subject - my university had very intensive 8-week terms, and I was doing a subject that required a huge amount of reading and around two essays a week. Friends at other institutions only had a couple of assignments a term! so it will vary!

The research point is an important one, I think, as a lack of research opportunities will push the university down the league tables - and again, this will impact on student employability.

Those are really useful points, H&H.

Looking just now on the Student Room as well as reading what you've said, I think it's going to be a no-go. Apparently there are very few societies and little by way of other socialising.

Thanks.

Coventry are following this model (newly created Coventry University College) with a two year compressed course in certain subjects (business, accounting etc) and I'm sure other subjects and places will soon follow... I think they're charging just over £4000 a year for tuition fees.

I'm in the second year of a three year degree course in economics and tbh it could fairly easily be compressed into two years

There are a couple of things to consider. Firstly, you need to think what difference it make to your DS how big the fees are? Fees are going to be repaid at 9% of salary above £21,000, and deducted by employers like a tax. So the amount he will repay per year will be the same whether the cost was £18k or £27k. And he won?t pay anything if he is not earning £21k, for example, if he is trekking around the world, doing further study, interning, doing a low paid job or (perish the thought) unemployed.

The difference is that it will take longer to wipe the bigger debt. BUT bear in mind that the outstanding debt will be scrubbed after 30 years anyway, and that the Govt are expecting a large proportion of graduates to fall into this category. (Actually, it will be a disaster for the public finances if they have got their sums wrong on how many will not pay back the full amount within 30 years, but that?s another thread).

So, I think what I am saying is that I would not get too hung up about the difference between an £18k or a £27k student loan debt, in the way that I would get very hung up about the difference between an £18k and a £27k credit card debt, for example. Though clearly it is an issue.

Now, for the difference between the University of Buckingham and the University of Nottingham. They are wildly, wildly different institutions. This will become very obvious as soon as your DS goes to visit.

University of Buckingham in 2009-10 had 845 undergraduates in 2009-10. So it?s smaller than many secondary schools.
University of Nottingham in 2009-10 had 24,665 undergraduates in 2009-10, of whom the majority (nearly 21,000) were from the UK.

Data source here

There is also a marked difference in profile of students from UK or overseas: the majority of the University of Buckingham?s undergraduates come from outside of the UK (505), whereas most University of Nottingham undergraduates (nearly 21,000) come from the UK. The numbers conducting research will be wildly different, libraries, sports facilities, opportunities to shag around, join societies and clubs etc. etc.

Personally I would pay fuck all notice to the NSS results because it?s a bit weird to compare the results of such a small number of students with the results of such a large number of students. Statistical comparability and all that. Also the NSS throws up some truly weird and wonderful findings, as others have said.

Thing is, he won't be getting into debt. We will be funding everything ourselves. It may not seem logical, but we don't do debt, and fortunately have the money.

OK, if you're going to pay upfront fees then you're taking a gamble and for most people it won't pay off but for some it will. Basically it will pay off if we assume that your DS will earn well above average graduate earnings. If he earns an average graduate salary and takes out a mortgage in future that your funds could have contributed towards, then it risks being a particularly illogical decision.

read this article from moneysavingexpert all the way to the bottom and see what you think

We all need crystal balls on this one!

Thanks very much for that, it certainly is food for thought. Have emailed the link to dh, we are normally extremely debt avoiding (paid off our mortgage really quickly), but it does look like paying for fees etc will be a waste of money.

I could have got it wrong but in the new system I dont think you are allowed to pay the fees up front even if you wanted to - unless you go private?

I am in two minds about this - I have had tutorials today with second years almost all of whom (who bothered to turn up) said they did okay last year but didnt actually do any/enough work - too much partying and enjoying themselves. And I work in a top flight uni so they are A grade students mostly. Had to restrain myself from telling them to grow up and stop wasting their money! The problem is that they do this and then complain when they get poor grades because they are paying for a degree...

I have two DD at Uni and I think on balance they would have been better off financially under this new system - longer time to pay it back and a higher salary at which you start paying.

The one thing to add, is that Buckingham (which has been around a long time, I looked at it back in the long distant past) has shorter vacations so less time to earn money.

My daughter attends the University of Buckingham and is thoroughly enjoying her time there but she made her choice after visiting many other universities as well and comparing them based on her personal preferences. She chose Buckingham as it offers the Oxbridge tutorial style of teaching which is intense. Others may prefer to sit in a lecture together with a large number of other students. She decided another attraction was that she could complete the nine 10 week terms (same as state funded universities) in just over two years as she believed that a long summer break would make become bored. Again others may want long holidays, it is down to personal preferences. My daughter was attracted by the size of Buckingham just over 1,100 under/post graduates on campus compared to other universities she visited such as Nottingham, Bath, UCL which had 15-20,000, again this was her personal preference.

I would suggest that important as financing university study is, to make it the key criteria could be something of an expensive mistake.

I think you're right, laughter. I'm glad your dd is enjoying Buckingham.

So far as the debt issue goes, the course ds wants to do in Nottingham is four years, as he'd spend the third year in the states, so the amount we've been planning to set aside is closer to £80k than £20k, taking into account accomodation and living expenses.

That would be a nice chunk towards a house purchase/whatever.

I don't know much about the Politics programmes, but do know a little about a couple of the programmes in one of the other faculties. I don't want to be too specific, but my concern would be that a lot of the academic staff in the faculty I'm thinking off don't have PhDs, and are nowhere near as up-to-date with research as staff at other universities would be (I've seen bibliographies for modules, and they're broadly what other universities would have been using twenty years ago). That might be fine for a lot of students, but if someone is planning any kind of career involving research, they might not be in the best position.

I cannot comment on the specifics of what crazyspaniel has written but in my experience research should not be confused with ability to teach. Many a Phd qualified academic has little desire or ability to teach as their focus is on undertaking research and writing papers as that is how their career in academia is judged and rewarded. From my experience there are some subjects taught at undergraduate and master level at university, such as business and management that should require tutors to have as much practiced based experience than theoretical knowledge.

I both studied and later worked at Buckingham in an admin role. It was intense, definitely less societies and organised socialising but extremely friendly. The Oxbridge tutorial system was exactly right for me and I found it excellent. I went in 2000, so before fees had gone up - I had a full academic scholarship so I didn't pay a penny. I used loans for my masters and LPC which I did in Birmingham as I couldn't afford to do them at Buckingham. I fully intend to study a PhD there at some point in the future as the quality of education I received was incomparable. I wouldn't want to do my PhD anywhere else. It really depends on your subject. For Law, it is internationally renowned, even if that's not what you hear in the UK. Obviously, being entirely independent means they are more flexible and like to produce well rounded students. Despite my degree being a single honours in law, I had to study a modern foreign language as well. I resented it at the time, but am very glad now.

Agree with Natterallday. The teachers were excellent teachers regardless of their published research. I found the staff at Birmingham entirely focussed on their own work - one went on a research trip whilst I was on a separate research trip abroad with no available mentor and didn't tell me he was going. I very nearly had to come back to the UK in the middle as no-one answered the phone or any e-mails! That would never, never have happened at Buckingham.

I think it really depends on what the subject is, I agree some (law, business) are inherently more vocational. And, as I said, I only really know about a couple of departments at Buckingham - but these are subjects that I think it would actually be quite hard to teach if you weren't involved in actual research, and if you didn't have a PhD. I know this because I teach one of the subjects myself, and I think that students would be disadvantaged by following the kind of syllabus that other universities ditched twenty years ago. I'm not sure how happy I'd be to accept someone onto an masters programme in my department, for example, based on what I've seen of the Buckingham syllabus. I also don't understand where this attitude that people who research are bad teachers comes from - yes, there are academics that only care about their research, but they are a dying breed. Most academics these days don't expect to get any research done during term time, are fully-commited to teaching and have to undertake a postgraduate teaching qualification. Many of my colleagues get their students actively involved in their own research, too, which has led to opportunities for the students, including employment and postgraduate study.