4 reviews for Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London

I don’t know

While the facilities are in theory great and the course run by experts, the support for students is non-existent. I had trouble with accommodation at the start of the course and could not afford to commute daily to London. I asked whether it was possible to attend non-practical classes and lectures remotely via Zoom or Teams or something just until I could find somewhere to live nearby, and although this would require nothing more than a laptop and any video conferencing software, there was no willingness to do this. I had been accepted onto the course before the pandemic, waited throughout that time to start, and when I finally do, with things much more difficult already because of the pandemic, the course director was unwilling to offer me any way to attend that wasn't going to quickly bankrupt me. I was forced due to financial and mental stress to withdraw from a course I had been waiting three years to start when a simple, temporary, adjustment could have been made and enabled me to continue. I am honestly appalled by such a lack of flexibility, and furious that although I will get a refund on my fees, that does nothing to mend the mental damage this has done, or the fact that now I need to re-evaluate my entire career plan.

Overall, my experience at this university has been pretty good. I’ve enjoyed working closely with my professor and dissertation supervisor as the structure of my course provided mostly 1:1 teaching/ working in a small seminar or tutorial format. I’ve had the chance to interact with several professionals in my field over Zoom conferences and write about arts-based topics that interest me. However, due to the pandemic, I have missed out on a great deal of research, exhibition and travel opportunities that are usually offered on my course. The library at my university has been very helpful at extending existing online resources and purchasing new ones. However, due to the nature of my course interacting mostly with academic material that has not been digitised, when the library was closed during the various lockdowns over this academic year, it was extremely difficult to conduct research. The course also runs for 9 months which is unusual for most MA courses in the UK of my subject. As a result, a great deal of my work on this course was quite rushed and I would have liked more time to research and write my dissertation. Perhaps extending the course to 12 months would benefit future students.

It was an I interesting year. Uni access during lockdown and all was handled well. The course was taught well and I don’t have any complaints but some wifi issue that were resolved.