Anyone else doing foundation degree at a college and feel conned?

-Mike-

-Mike-

-Mike-

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Hi all,

I'm just after some other opinions on the quality of degree education at colleges. I took a foundation degree in computer networking and currently I feel conned for the amount of money borrowed to what I've actually learned.

Such fine examples include

  • Lecturers that don't even bother to turn up and with no warning
  • Taking your pulse rate to put it into an excel spreadsheet and compare to sports students
  • Learning trig and other pointless maths stuff
  • Learning C and Java

I thought the degree would be network installations, configurations and other things to enable me to either one day get a job in the field or something similar.

All it seems to me is that we have lecturers that don't want to be there, and are being taught pointless rubbish when they should be devoting more time to the actual course material.

Anyone else have the same going on, or did I just choose a bad place?

Thanks
 
Isn't the foundation year just to get you up to the standard to actually start the course? So basic maths skills like trig would be relevant?

Edit - Looks like I didn't read that properly, it's a foundation degree? Not a foundation year? What on earth are they?
 
Murf said:
Isn't the foundation year just to get you up to the standard to actually start the course? So basic maths skills like trig would be relevant?

Edit - Looks like I didn't read that properly, it's a foundation degree? Not a foundation year? What on earth are they?
Click to expand...

What are they - well to me it appears to be a waste of time. Some lad was late after taking his car for its MOT and they wanted him to fill in a lateness form. I was surprised they didn't ring his parents to complain.

Is a real uni like this?
 
murf i think a foundation degree is just what they call a normal degree with an extended/foundation year bolted on. you dont usually get a qualification or anything but it allows you to start the 'proper' course

OP from people i know who did foundation years this seems pretty similar to what they did. its essentially a waste of time but you need it to progress so best just put up with it (id complain about the late lecturers and things though!)

and no real uni isnt like that. you can do whatever you want in most cases.
 
Murf said:
No.

Have you got a syllabus? What's the qualification you'll receive at the end? How long is the course and how much is it costing?

Seems weird to me.
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The amazing title the tutor was saying you could add to your name is FdSc Computer Networking.

The cost of it is £5900 and the duration is two years. I don't have a syllabus, never was given one just the head of the course telling me what was involved.
 
"andy" said:
murf i think a foundation degree is just what they call a normal degree with an extended/foundation year bolted on. you dont usually get a qualification or anything but it allows you to start the 'proper' course

OP from people i know who did foundation years this seems pretty similar to what they did. its essentially a waste of time but you need it to progress so best just put up with it (id complain about the late lecturers and things though!)

and no real uni isnt like that. you can do whatever you want in most cases.
Click to expand...

Its not a foundation year, I looked at doing a course at plymouth uni which had a foundation year but decided against it for that very reason. Learning Y=MX+C again doesn't really impress me much to be honest, I did that 11 years ago!
 
-Mike- said:
The amazing title the tutor was saying you could add to your name is FdSc Computer Networking.

The cost of it is £5900 and the duration is two years. I don't have a syllabus, never was given one just the head of the course telling me what was involved.
Click to expand...
You paid £6K for something that you didn't know the content of?
 
Our college tried to push a foundation degree on us after we were finished but it looked like a waste of time due to lack of facilities, reputation and the 'degree' itself not even being a finished qualification. You have to go to a proper university afterwards to turn it into a degree with honours so we were better off to go and get a genuine degree.
 
platypus said:
You paid £6K for something that you didn't know the content of?
Click to expand...

I knew what the content was at the time, nothing was said of the foundation maths stuff. Quite frankly I know how to divide numbers and do maths functions. What relevance it has to cabling a building I don't know
 
i had a similar experience with a sound engineering short course in south africa. Costing R5000 for 3 months about £400-500, which is expensive in south africa. well for me it was.

during the induction they took us into the studios and showed us all the digital mixers and such all the racks, i was impressed. so i signed up with a friend and we were doing the course.

after 2 weeks i realized that it was complete non sense, we just sat on macs in protools i already had experience in cubase and sound forge for a few years at home so it was ridiculous. after a month i quit, i only paid the deposit. my friend quit as well. we tried to speak to them about it but they insisted that we have to pay for it all. they even chased my friend up a few years later with a court order to get the money, even though we didn't complete it.
 
A foundation degree is typically the first 2 years of a normal 3 year Bachelors degree. You sometimes then have the option of 'topping up' to a full degree or remaining with your foundation qualification.
 
-Mike- said:
I knew what the content was at the time, nothing was said of the foundation maths stuff. Quite frankly I know how to divide numbers and do maths functions. What relevance it has to cabling a building I don't know
Click to expand...
Well, quite a lot of networking is mathematical functions.
 
groen said:
i had a similar experience with a sound engineering short course in south africa. Costing R5000 for 3 months about £400-500, which is expensive in south africa. well for me it was.

during the induction they took us into the studios and showed us all the digital mixers and such all the racks, i was impressed. so i signed up with a friend and we were doing the course.

after 2 weeks i realized that it was complete non sense, we just sat on macs in protools i already had experience in cubase and sound forge for a few years at home so it was ridiculous. after a month i quit, i only paid the deposit. my friend quit as well. we tried to speak to them about it but they insisted that we have to pay for it all. they even chased my friend up a few years later with a court order to get the money, even though we didn't complete it.
Click to expand...

A little word from the wise, no course will have you sat in front of a huge desk every single day. The sad fact is big mixers cost big money, so a facility will likely only have a few studios at best, then the majority of teaching is done in computer suite type environments. It's even more apparent when you consider the number of students needed to fund a Music Technology course of any description, it's a stupidly expensive course to teach. :(
 
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