Design studies, University of the Arts London (UAL)

BA Illustration at UAL’s Camberwell campus has been a huge disappointment. We pay the same fee as other uni students, yet we literally do not have classes, and there have been multiple weeks (not breaks) where we didn’t have any lectures or things to do, thus they are essentially NOT TEACHING us anything! I haven’t acquired any new knowledge from attending this course. The whole course feels like a huge scam, and the atmosphere is extremely unprofessional and chaotic. We do not have access to any of the printing or other facilities on our own and what they call our ‘studio’ is so small and uncomfortable and with no storage space (!) that one cannot work there. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS COURSE OR UAL IN GENERAL TO ANYONE.

Amazing university of artistic students.

It's all b*******

Honestly.. I'm really disappointed with this course :(. Im in my first year and I feel like this whole thing has been a massive waste of time and money. A lot of my course mates seem to love it, don't get me wrong, but I definitely think it works a lot better if you ALREADY have a great understanding of everything before you arrive. I was under the impression that we'd get taught all the technical skills and fine-tuning here, but unfortunately not. I feel completely out of my depth with very very little help from anyone. I emailed the course tutor a bunch of times and rarely got any response at all. The subject matter is quite hard to comprehend unless you already have a load of experience in the field. The projects also havent been half as inspiring as the ones Ive heard of at other unis. Also it kind of feels like a constant competition. Chelsea itself is truly lovely and everything else about it is wonderful, but I feel like the first year of this course has been truly terrible.

First year tutor unprofessional, had clear favourites and didn't bother with the rest of us even slightly. Very little (/no) extra support given to those who need it. Unfriendly class structure. Uninteresting/uninspiring projects all year.

The first year is mainly a filler for international students to get used to the course. Did all the same things as what I did at my last year at college

Where do I even begin. At the start of my course, we had two teachers that were well trained, had experience and was helpful. They have both been moved and prioritised for year two and three and we get different younger teachers that don’t know everything about the course. Secondly, they explain literally nothing to you. There is this better lives project that we had to pick options for in our email, but no one knew what we were picking for. when asking the teacher, even they didn’t know and made it completely terrifying as it takes up two months of our course. Basically it’s someone’s social nightmare, you get moved into a completely new course with new people. I had one scheduled lesson a week where we did nothing other th have the teachers focus on the top students. if you want any more lessons you have to sign up for everything yourself by catching random emails by luck. i signed up for this course, i want more things to be part of the ciriculum and to be on my timetable.

I love textiles, the opportunities are endless

Well.. Where do I start? Went to LCC for both Foundation and Graphic Design (so 4 years in total). Can not believe that this university is ranked 2nd in the world this year for art and design! The teachers barely knew us as the class sizes were too overcrowded so there was little support and most of us felt anonymous. I guess it has good (overrated) reputation in the industry but I personally had such little career support at the uni, so I'm lucky if I can even get into the industry without vital networking and skill building. Would've been nice if we had an actual personal tutor that was familiar with our work and was available to contact should we have any uncertanties. We had to learn everything by ourselves as the lessons were not helpful/useful. The grading requirement system is very poor as I know students that clearly cheated for their projects and it was not flagged up (they still passed).

The course is really good

My project was said to be too difficult to understand while the exhibition had a student who put a video of GTA 5 with a voice-over, that was considered art. Be aware this is not a facility to think different and explore ideas in because the tutors will not understand it.

Is very nice, but it is very independent

menswear at lcf is a joke to begin with in the first year. Since September we have barley done anything. You would think that on a design class you would get taught about design. Instead they expect you to come in for a 9:30 till 17:30 session where you are basically left on your own until a tutor comes round and basically doesn't tell you that much and the talk lasts 20 mins at the most. If you are going on this design course and expect to get taught design you are wrong. Instead they are pushing for a artistic approach which is just boring and doesn't have that much to do with design.

An art course with absolutely no technical classes. There was no drawing classes before this year when I pushed for one of them to be created. You only go to class to present your project and get mediocre feedback on it because this course is so general that you could be presenting a project about a children’s book to people who want to work in something very different. For such a reputed course, it is dreadfully bad, clearly just made to cram as many students in it as possible and offering very little skill building. They have an approach that mixes fine art with graphic design, they expect all of their students to want to change the world with design campaigns. There is no way you can learn about techniques on this course. Sadly it looks like this is becoming the norm for art courses.

Good course and let us creative a lot of things and keep thinking about ideas from our daily life