Does anybody know anything about City University London

[PencilP0int]

Seems really hard to get any info on it.

Good for journalism and media courses, afaik. Not so much for others.

Good for professional/practical degrees and courses. Journalism, law, nursing, optometry, lots of other health science stuff. Means to an end vibe rather than deep love of academia.

Is it well thought of? Is the teaching,job possibilities etc good?Thinking of computer science.

You won't get any nice comments about it here because it's not Russell Group / red brick. Mumsnetters' children only go to Top 10 universities, don't you know.
But it not bad for certain subjects - see: www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/06/city-university-of-london-ranked-in-the-top-40-universities-in-the-uk

@Sarah2458 Thats clearly not accurate. It’s just that few MN dc will go there.

@PencilP0int I only know it for professional law courses. For CS, the most important thing is employability. Look where the uni is!! Do they have employer connections? Another thread talks about loads of CS grads not getting jobs so, for me, employability is key. Others have suggested Engineering is a better bet and more versatile.

Music.

Very committed composition happens there. And of course lots of intermingling with the local conservatoires.

I went there 1997 to 2000 for diploma nursing.

I went there for the law conversion course from 2006-7. For that, it is the best in the country. There are very specialised postgrad things where it's top of the tops - law, journalism and I think speech therapy (the graduate programme). For undergraduate programmes it's not in the same league at all, but I'm not saying it's awful. Look at how it ranks in your subject area and more generally.

Hi, OP -

I think of City as a place with a no-nonsense reputation. Nothing wrong with that!

Their CS is ranked 37/108 in the Complete University Guide which is a fairly holistic measure for UGs. About what I would have guessed. Graduate prospects are good at 87%.

They offer the option of a degree programme with a placement year. That’s usually a fine thing. However in the absence of discussion I suspect it is up to the student to find the placement - usually the Careers Service will help but there are no guarantees. (This is typical) How difficult this is, is def worth investigating and not just through official channels. If DS is interested I would encourage him to join the online forum The Student Room to ask City CS students this and other questions directly

General impression: a solid programme in a solid university that doesn’t give itself airs. You may need to be proactive. If you are I think it could work well. But TSR will say more

I did a MSc there and was very happy

I don't know whether it's relevant to you, but it's about to become a much larger institution as it's merging with St George's University of London on the 1st of August.

I went there about 15 years ago for a 2-year LLB. I got a magic circle training contract firm while studying there so it never held me back. No idea about other professions tho

I’ve put a number of my team through PG Masters courses there and they are very practical and did day release over two years rather than one year FT . The same course was run at UCL but was more theoretical and FT so as an employer I preferred the City course. However they are cutting that course and no longer an option which is such a shame but many Unis are doing the same and don’t think they are doing widespread cuts just a jiggle about of some courses.

Great for professional Law courses .

My brother did their Journalism PG course and has had a successful career with broadsheet papers. My DD will be applying there this autumn for Law Conversion.

I met two young undergrads recently who are at City - both very sparky and motivated and seemed to be having a good time. One had been off for a year to a Canadian uni.

As an aside my husband is an academic in Cyber security and he is recommending prospective students consider Software Engineering rather than Computer Science - he thinks it offers more flexibility and better employment opportunities now coding from scratch isn't so important with AI.

The comment from your DH is interesting. I agree that many making a career of programming are likely to be displaced by AI, but this is only a (relatively small part of) CS. And AI programming is often suboptimal. Frequently that doesn’t matter but as things stand now human programmers are needed for certain applications.

Some of our CS graduates build AI and troubleshoot AI. AI certainly does not seem to be having a negative impact on their many and varied career opportunities (which include Cyber).

Having said that, the boundary between CS and SE is somewhat permeable. I think it is easier to go from CS towards SE, but it is certainly possible to go the other way, as professional experience and interests takes you.

Yes @poetryandwine I am sure DH would agree about the permeability of the boundary - it sounds as though CS is probably your field - so yo will know more than me. And I'm sure that there are common modules across both degrees. What DH's department is finding - in a top 20 department but not as high ranking as your uni - is that too many CS graduates now aren't getting the jobs they were hoping for.

DH had a 30 year career as a software architect before going into academia and liked employing physicists and classicists for software design. His view is software engineering provides training in flexible thinking that works well with the demands of AI compared with a focus on coding that many CS students have - or have had. Just something for students to be aware of in choosing courses and modules.

Thanks very much, @Juja . What you report about employability is most interesting, as is the larger perspective of your DH.

I’ve not discussed my discipline on MumsNet, but I’ve enjoyed working on analysing the employability of our STEM graduates and issues for the future.