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The overall ranking is decided by students from this institution rating them in a 2026 Whatuni review. This forms the basis of the Whatuni Student Choice Awards (WUSCAs for short).
3.03.52.56 Student reviews
Sort:Latest reviewsI studied at the centre for history with uhi and if you have any other choice in university take it. I would consider taking an access course in a more reputable college before accepting a place at uhi. The classes on history modules are glorified Skype calls (even before the pandemic) where the "lecturer" will spend 20 minutes lecturing before asking open questions for the students to fumble their way through to fill time. If you are expecting a traditional university experience uhi is not where you want to go. It doesn't help that the assigned readings range from the overly simplistic to incomprehensible babble which leave you understanding less about the modules themes than if you just skip them. The staff are difficult to get hold of and often do the bare minimum amount of feedback which is a slight problem when you write a dissertation. During my last year at uhi, I was only able to have 3 half an hour meetings with my dissertation "supervisor" and the feedback was so unhelpful that I might as well have asked a bowl of spaghetti as it would have been just as useful. My experience with this programme was not good and I would implore anyone wanting to study History to avoid UHI. The programme is very good at promoting itself as a forward thinking academic department in touch with modern issues. It is nothing more than meaningless virtue signalling. The lecturers don't care about its students unless they share the same academic interests and approaches of the lecturing staff. This means that if you have academic interests outside of a narrow field of historiography you will recieve no support from the department and will be treated as nothing more than a vessel for them to plant their backwards ideas into. The modules themselves although interesting at times were not well taught and it was very hard to gauge what the lecturers wanted in terms of assessments which basically meant you went in blind to every assignment hoping you wrote the magic combination of words to get a good grade. It also doesn't help that the marking scheme was so vague that a lot of the grades I got felt subjective and more determined by a lecturers personal preferences rather than a standardised criteria. Complaints or concerns are treated as personal attacks on the department which makes change impossible. It also means that toxic students are allowed to get away with nasty behaviour as the department will protect their favourites from any sort of discipline.
I have enjoyed my time at university so far even if nearly all of it has been online, we are give lots of notes to help us understand all the different subjects.
If you would like to study geography you must do it at UHI, which is situated in the geographic and geologic wonderland that is the Highlands. Field trips to the Cairngorms and NW Highlands, as well as further afield to the Swiss Alps all serve to reinforce the classroom learning, while the friendly and professional staff demonstrate all the modern technological methods you can use to present what you have learned.
Absolutely hate it!!! Cannot day enough negative things regarding my experience, the people who run UHI should seriously take a look at themselves because I get the impression they are not concerned with the responsibilities of the role they have committed to and do as little as possible to make things more convenient for themselves.
I'm moving to another University in Glasgow next year so I may update this review to reflect the comparison. If you are stuck in the Highlands and want to specialise in "highland" history, then the UHI is certainly an option. If you are interested in the clearances, then the highlands historian Dr Elizabeth Ritchie works at the UHI so it might be worthwhile on that fact alone. But the benefits start to fall away after this, and you start to realise that you are attending a more formulised Open University which has far more experience delivering a distance learning experience through its learning resources and online support.
2.6
Incompetent lecturing staff and very laid back approach to learning. Was shocked when we got a very inexperienced lecturer take over half way through the course leading to problems and complaints from everyone on the course.
The best aspects of the course were the first semester, felt structured, organised and most of all supported by every lecturer from every module. Once semester 2 began it became evident what we were in store for, and it didn't dissapoint. The main focus of semester 2 was the Graded Unit, this is critical to achieving a good grade from the HNC. Yet UHI gave us a new lecturer that didn't have any experience teaching. As you can imagine this didn't go well. The graded unit changed so many times and led me and others to get very behind as we were constantly having to rewrite and reevaluate what was expected because the lecturer couldn't make up his mind.