my lad is doing this course a lot of the courseware is jsut total rubbish.. (btec level 3 full time 2 year course)
the final straw is the fact they dropped the networking part of the course and replaced it with a Games Design module.
Can the collage do drop such a useful module and replace it with their own rubbish?
Is the courseware not reviewed? is there no standard?
They have no books only a few a4 handouts with nothing more than a few lines of info on for them to look up more info on on wikipedia... the lecturer does not know anything about IT and jsut tells them off for asking questions saying 'you are level 3 students you should be able to find the information yourself'
"Computer Studies" is such a general title, it could cover anything and everything to do with 'computers' - and most of what they do cover is done at such a high level, it's almost worthless anyway. I've spent 2 years doing the ND in computer studies, then another 2 years doing HND in the same thing. Although it's 13 years since I finished the HND, I'd expect that the same applies today in that most of the subject matter is just garbage and is only designed to teach how you to 'pass the exams', rather than 'how to survive in the real world'... much like driving lessons teach you 'how to pass the driving test', and it's only when you've passed the test and started driving by yourself that you really learn to drive properly.
If they've dropped 'Networking' from the curriculum, so what...? Even if they kept it in, he'd only learn 0.1% of what he'd need to know if he perused a career in IT Support/Network Management. Same with Game Design, he's only going to learn 0.1% of what he'd need to know in order to be a Games Designer.
By doing that course all you're doing is getting a very high-level overview of a lot of stuff which meets some predefined criteria set by "BTEC" or whoever it is now... with the ultimate goal being to simply get a bit of paper at the end (i.e. the qualification).
Once you've got the qualification you'd hopefully have taken an interest in one particular aspect of it, i.e. Software Development, Project Management, IT Support, Web Design. Then you can, if you want, find a degree course that specializes in one of the above and then learn some more specific/useful stuff... after which you can hopefully get a foot on the ladder as, for example, a 'Junior/Graduate Developer'. Once you are in somewhere, then you learn how to do it all properly... then build up your skill set and work your way up. Or if you are lucky, you can sack the Degree off, and try and get in somewhere with just the HND.
... I wouldn't get too hung-up on what the course does and doesn't cover, as it's mostly all BS anyway.
BTW I didn't take the degree route and managed to get into a software company straight away. I'm now a .NET developer working for a big firm, using absolutely nothing that I learned from ND/HND.
All your qualification does is help you to get in somewhere, once you are in, the experience you gain will eventually completely over-ride the value of any qualifications you do or don't have.
I was really gutted because I wanted to do the btec diploma in networking but only 11 people wanted to do it and their magic number was 13...so the course was cancelled on the opening day and I got put down to a national and general 
