Does anyone have experience with University of London's External System?

dory

Hello.

Does anyone have any experience with this system? You can get degrees from top UK universities like SOAS and LSE. LSE's ones are particularly attractive in that from what I can make out they are cheap enough. 3000 Euro or so for an entire degree if you do it in the minimum of 3 years and if it's your second degree. Slightly more if it's your first as you have to do more modules.

I would love to apply but the closing date is tomorrow. I could get the online form filled in by then, but I need loads of supporting documents and I would not be able to get them and send them to London in time. Does anyone know if these need to be sent before the application closing date or the registration closing date next month? I've tried to get an answer from London but no joy so far.

If anyone has any bit of wisedom about this I would be very interested to hear. I've also looked into the Open University but their courses seem very general, and for example the biology course is mostly pop-science type things. Nothing I think would pass with the Teaching Council if I ever wanted to use this degree for teaching.

BuffyBot

I considered them before and did some reading on it on various sites.

Search is down but Google throws up a few previous boards.ie threads about UoL external. I posted on the last thead about it with this. Googling outside of boards.ie will also reveal a lot more.

Really it depends what you think you can handle. Some people would thrive in that "bare bones" environment, but I'd hazard a guess that many don't. As you've slightly encountered, their support gets a lot of flack also for nothing being entirely..supportive, or helpful.

BTW don't misunderstand the OU stuff based on descriptions alone - the courses are just as indepth and rigourous as any out there. They may frame the theories using accesible examples, but the actual knowledge behind them is no easier to gain, or less thorough than other institutions.

The offices in Dublin or Belfast have course materials to peruse and you'll see they are just as extensive as anything else. I doubt there is much the TC would take issue with.

dory

Thanks for that.
So there's an OU office in Dublin? I must check it out and see what's on offer. I have looked into their courses and there are a few I would be interested in.
Cost seems to be more for OU, but I suppose the support they're famous for would account for that.
I realise there's an OU thread but seeing as I'm here.....has anyone given a reason for the prices being so much more in Ireland to the UK? A £150 course suddenly jumps to £360 for an Irish person. I would have thought if they are teaching over the internet it would make no difference if I'm in Skerries or Sheffield.
Thanks again!

WexCan

The UK government subsidises the courses for UK residents - that's the long and the short of it.

The OU is actually very cheap if you're in the UK - I'm doing two 60 point courses this year and paying nothing because I'm eligible for full financial support (you can get partial support if you earn up to £30something thousand) plus I receive a £260 grant for things like stationery, internet access etc.

Would be great if the Irish government would do something similar - the OU has the resources over here (tutors etc) and could become a much more popular choice for Irish people with some support.

Contact details for OU in Ireland:

ireland at open dot ac dot uk

Tel: (01) 678 5399
Fax: (01) 678 5442

The Open University in Ireland
Holbrook House
Holles Street
Dublin 2

Give them a call and they'll be happy for you to visit to look at course materials/have a chat.

Victor McDade

I'm doing a Geography course with UoL (LSE), just started this year.

I applied close to the deadline last year and got a reply from the admin office that they had extended the application deadline until the end of January if I wanted to sit exams this June. I decided against it but it might be worth giving them a call if you want to try for this year.

They send out a study guide book for each subject with a list of essential and recommended reading, these "essential reading" books will cost around €350 per year. They don't provide any kind of tuition online or they don't publish lectures for download either. You're on your own really. They have a website with forums where students can discuss things among themselves; and an online library which is quite extensive, but I've always found reading from a screen is no substitute for a hard copy book. Exams can be taken in a few different places around Ireland, they're held in May/June. The university arranges a study weekend in London every February, which I'm not sure about but it's cheap (£30 per subject) and they run a 3-week summer course but I don't know much about it, I think it's around £1,700 or something. The external degree is just as valuable as a degree achieved through full time study, students sit the same exam.

All-in-all it's a fairly inexpensive way to get a respected degree, but you need to be highly self-motivated and if you have access to a good library, even better. I'm finding that there's quite a lot of course work to be done, but it's not particularly hard. Up to you really, if you think you can study alone and have enough spare time, I'd say go for it.

osullic

Thinking of doing the maths and economics one of these?
Anyone have any experience of this?