London Metropolitan University - Post Graduate Course -MA in Communication Management

Hey Everyone! This is TWINKLE!

Please help me! I can't seem to get a satisfactory feedback on London Met University.

I have read various threads where posters have asked the "question "is London Met a good uni". I thought my experience(s) might be of assistance.

Firstly I think it might be useful if I write a little about my background as I am probably not a "typical student" (whatever that is).

I was 41 years old when I was accepted to study Law at London Met. I am also (among other things) a qualified teacher. It is worthy of note that at the time my wife was working as a university lecturer at Cambridge University. This provided an additional useful perspective.

I only applied to London Met as :-

(a) I had been messed around by another uni (APU as it was then) - this wasted 18 months and when you get to my age time begins to be of the essence.

(b) They had a February starting date.

Thus it was in February 2004 that I commenced at LMU.

The first problem was the complete lack of time table being prepared in advance (or at least provided to students to assist their preparation) for the first week. We were just expected to turn up and make ourselves available.

It was somewhat coincidental that this coincided with my wife preparing her time table - for September 2005 ! At the time her university supplied students with their time tables well in advance of any course commencing.

Anyway having adopted a slightly militant stance we were able to obtain a timetable at the end of the second day of week one - for which no lectures or tutorials were scheduled in any case. It should be noted that LMU had two ten week semesters of teaching (I do not count the periods during which exams were taking place at there were no lectures / tutorials during this time). Thus out of a possible ten weeks maximum - one week was effectively wasted.

Week two lectures started.

I was fortunate that two of my lecturers were both excellent lawyers and superb teachers. This was for Legal Method and Constituional Law. Hence full marks to these two (one of whom is regularly instructed as a Barrister in complex cases which frequently appear in the newspapers).

Unfortunately the other lecturers - Contract Law and "The study of Law" were appalingly bad. They simply had no concept of how to teach.

I should add that this "the study of Law" appears to be unique to LMU and mainly consisted of bringing peoples English up to a basic standard.

However to me it was a total waste of time as I know that we start sentences with a capital letter.

Likewise two of the three tutorial groups were excellent (once again Legal Method and Constitutional Law) the other was appaling (Contract Law).

The individual who was my tutor for Contract Law failed to turn up on two occassions which after a 50 mile train journey to attend (I live in the country) did not impress me to say the least. On other occasions this individual would only "tutor" for ten or fifteen minutes before saying "that will do for today" (tutorial sessions were supposed to be for ninety minutes).

Ultimately we (as a tutorial group) decided to make a formal complaint when he lost our completed mock exam papers. Sadly we did not get very far (and believe me we tried !) Thus we had no measure of our progress before the end of semester exams.

I will cite one more example before I disappear into cyberspace .

We were all allocated a "personal tutor".

On one occasion I needed to contact mine. I telephoned on six occasions over a period of two weeks to arrange a meeting. I also wrote twice with no response.

Ultimately, despite passing all of my first semester exams (incredibly with a first), I decided to count my losses and withdraw from the course. This decision was echoed by many of my contemporaries. It is worth noting that LMU has a drop out rate of about 33% across all courses.

Therefore in summary to attempting to answer the question "is LMU a good uni" I would have to say (based on my personal experience) "NO".

However there are certainly a few excellent tutors but I suspect that these are in the minority.

I did meet some very interesting and diverse people in my intake and so the experience was not a complete was of time.

You have been warned ! (Sorry for such a long post)