BPP University London Holborn

Going there for study in LLM
Apr 21st, 2023

Apr 10th, 2023

The library has weird sounds coming from the AC vents most of the time. The library hours arent that great either. The eating areas are depressing. The materials to read and instructions for classes are literally all over the place. They say they take feedback and theyre centralising everything via handout sheets, online resources and the Hub, but it doesnt seem to have made anything better. I have to create and utilise other materials in order to understand what BPPs materials are about. I hope they also better advertise societies and create better UIs for students to know where to go for society announcements and how to engage with them. Frankly, Instagram seems to be the best place to get updates on these but that shouldnt be the norm. Ive signed up through a bunch of Google Forms to be included in societies, but I have not received any confirmation yet. To reiterate, they really need to review their study materials because I have found plenty of mistakes and sometimes they are a literal mind warp to read.
Apr 10th, 2023

While the quality of teaching is decent (with some tutors more engaging than others), I cannot stress how incompetent this institutions administration is. The use of the phrase Kafkaesque is overused, but I think here quite apt in describing BPPs labyrinthine bureaucracy. At any point you need to liaise with the staff for something as anodyne as an address change, you can guarantee to be met with resistance, obstinance, and an impressive lack of accountability by the vast majority of people working in the administration. Ever so rarely you might reach someone with an actual name (rather than dealing with a shadowy Case Worker or Programme Team member). But they are rarely able to help you in any case, suggesting their hands are tied by some unspoken policy whose intent is to frustrate rather than assist. Kafkas The Trial must have been a source of inspiration. One department will try and shirk responsibility for the lack of a delivered outcome by blaming another department. Its questionable if BPP has the technology or infrastructure in place to even facilitate inter-departmental communication, and I am not suggesting this out of rhetorical hyperbole. I literally am unsure if they are allowed to cc members of separate divisions. Students are prohibited from directly emailing anyone with a problem. Instead, you are forced by design to submit queries to the hub for any problem under the sun, after which you must resign yourself to the fact that you very well may not hear back from anyone for weeks. Currently, my cohort is waiting for our course materials to appear online with less than a week before the new term begins. Neither have the print materials even been dispatched for shipping, despite having months to prepare for this. Reaching out to get a status update is utterly pointless due to the impossibility of ever speaking with someone with a semblance of power or responsibility, and I genuinely think this is intended. BPP is a case study in what happens when private equity owns an educational institution. The student experience is not a priority simply because its not profitable to regard it as such. Its quite pitiful. I wonder where the oversight is. But then I reflect that its function is to undertake a box-ticking function, which is to deliver on SRA learning outcomes something it only just barely manages to do. If you have a choice in the matter, BPPs competitor the University of Law is at least fit for purpose and provides a measure of competence. But if youre like me undertaking a qualification sponsored by a law firm, you will need to grin your teeth and bear it.
Mar 28th, 2023

OVERALL: Poor teaching quality, money-hungry, zero internal communication, exploitative terms and conditions. READ THEIR TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU ENROLL! I took the psychology conversion course starting from January 2022. A week later I found the academic quality dissatisfying, not comparable to standard universities like UCL, LSE, QM, etc. at all, so I decided to withdraw from this course. There began my nightmare. Initially, it took me 30 minutes to reach someone on the phone, and the staff gave confusing and incoherent information every time. Despite the staff being nice and friendly, I was told that I needed to pay 50% of the entire fees despite NOT receiving education at all. Usually, for public universities in the U.K., there is a 6-week grace period which means the student can and withdraw, free of charge, from the course should they find the course unsatisfactory. However, that is NOT the case with BPP. I highly suspect that their internal system is not well-constructed at all because they had my details and status wrong and that took a couple of weeks and several long-waited phone calls to sort. After I understood that I had to pay 50% of the entire fees without getting any education of qualification at all, I wanted to file a complaint to BPP's complaint team and appeal for the waiver or reduction of the fees. The student service asked me to find my department head to start the withdrawal process, but my department head told me she was not in charge of this. Therefore, after about three weeks of such responsibility shifting and passing the buck, I was finally able to get a contact email with the formal complaint department. Then I started my formal complaint procedure. The staff from the Complaint team was friendly, quick to respond and I would like to thank the Joint Head of Regulation and Compliance and Vice Chancellor's Nominee for their swift responses and assistance throughout the whole process. They promised that should the complaint not upheld, I would be at most only liable for 50% of the fees. Then the final outcome came two and a half month later in May with another appeal in between. I received a small fee reduction out of Good Will from BPP, so I accepted the decision, made the payments, settled this complaint and completed my withdrawal in June 2022. Then the ridiculous event happened: today, a whole year later, on 1st March 2023, I received a call from BPP's finance department saying that I need to clear my outstanding fee liabilities. They told me that I needed to pay full fees of 11,000 because my withdrawal happened in June 2022, which is more than 5 months since the start of the term (Jan 2022). I was shocked. I answered that it was settled and I had cleared all my fees liabilities in June 2022. The person on the other side of the phone then asked me to send them an email with every correspondence and confirming that my fees have been cleared. I have sent them through and now waiting for a reply. Why are they haunting me and asking for money that I DO NOT OWE after 9 months since I withdraw from this course? Two main reasons maybe: 1. Extremely poor internal system, it seems that there is hardly any communication between staff across departments. A general lack of accurate documentation of information, bad system coherence, a lot of inefficiency, to a point as if it is deliberate to cause students trouble. 2. Pure exploitation: they prioritise using their power to extract money from their students than to providing decent education and general service. A lack of care for student/user experience overall. Strongly advise against this organization.
Mar 1st, 2023