Mood brighter outside the big two
Students of the Legal Practice Course (LPC) are more satisfied at smaller LPC providers than the big law schools.
The much lower number of students attending the likes of Northumbria, Nottingham Trent and other minor law schools are notably happier than the masses at gigantic pair BPP University Law School and The University of Law (ULaw).
In Legal Cheek‘s exclusive LPC student survey, the little law schools were ranked either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ for ‘face-to-face teaching’, ‘online learning’, ‘feedback’, ‘facilities and study space’, ‘course materials’, ‘careers service’, ‘value for money’ and ‘social life’.
BPP and ULaw did OK, with the former ranking ‘good’ overall (and ‘excellent’ for teaching) and the latter ‘average’ (but ‘good’ for five out of the eight categories on which it was scored). However, with the vast majority of the big two’s students attending their London centres, where fees are around the £15,000 mark, the pair struggled in the ‘value for money’ category. For this, BPP was rated ‘average’ and ULaw ‘quite bad’.
In total, 195 current LPC students completed the survey, including 36 from law schools other than the main providers. Eight of these are studying at Northumbria and five at Nottingham Trent. The other students are at Anglia Ruskin, Bournemouth University, Cardiff University, City University, De Monfort University, Leeds Beckett, Liverpool John Moores, London Met, Kaplan, Staffordshire University, Swansea University, University of Central England, Derby University, Hertfordshire University, Sheffield University and UWE. We have combined these into a single ‘Other’ category.
The full results are below. Please note that for the ‘weighted average’ figure shown in the graphs, the lower the score the better — with one ‘excellent’, two ‘good’, three ‘average’, four ‘quite bad’ and five ‘awful’.
The University of Law
Overall weighted average: 3.1 (Average — top end)
Number of students surveyed: 93
BPP University
Overall weighted average: 2.83 (Good — lower end)
Number of students surveyed: 66
Smaller providers
Overall weighted average: 2.13 (Good — top end)
Number of students surveyed: 36
Smaller provider breakdown: Northumbria (8), Nottingham Trent (5), Sheffield University (3), Cardiff University (2), City University (2), De Monfort University (2), Kaplan (2), Liverpool John Moores (2), Anglia Ruskin (1), Bournemouth University (1), Leeds Beckett (1), London Met (1), Staffordshire University (1), Swansea University (1), University of Central England (1), Derby University (1), Hertfordshire University (1) and UWE (1).
Read the GDL satisfaction survey results here.
Next up, it’s the BPTC satisfaction results — coming tomorrow.