QUOTE(lee92 @ Jul 21 2012, 10:48 AM)
Hi,I am a prospective student of University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) and wanna get some guides and opinions from all seniors,alumni of UNMC or current students..Please spend some of your precious time to leave a comment here~
A few of my concerns are listed as follow :
1) Is UNMC good in term of their lecturers, learning environment, teaching, quality of teaching materials etc?
2) Is the BSc(Hons) Economics of UNMC a good course ?
3)Is really the quality of teaching and learning of UNMC comparable or on par with the Main campus (UK campus) ?
Any comments,points of view, advises, critics are welcome and please kindly provide me your opinions as I really couldn't find much information about UNMC from the net and people around. THANKS for your kindness and helps! =) Have a nice day!
Dear Lee,
I'm a student from BSc Econs and I think I'll be able to help you with your queries. From the look of it, I think you're interested in the Economics degree, aren't you? If so, I strongly recommend you to study in University of Nottingham (no hustling here) if you can't go overseas. The reason being that the University of Nottingham is only one of the a few private institutions that has Economics Department for the degree. Most other private institutions' economics degrees are either examined externally (e.g. Help with UoL) or mixed up with other Business course in Business Department.
Having said that, the degree is more specialised within the Economics circle. You can check out the modules that you'll be taking here (
My Webpagehttp://programmespec.nottingham.ac.uk/malaysia/asp/view_specification.asp?crs_id=503215&year_id=000112). To compare with the Business module, Economics modules are much more rigorous and quantitative. On top of that, you will also have the options to choose optional courses from School of Politics, History and International Relations as well as the Business School. (P.S. Whilst you can pick some of the core modules from these schools, the students from PHIR and NUBs, on the other hand, are not allowed to take the core modules from the SoE. I guess that can be some sort of indicator to show SoE's are more rigorous. Nevertheless, Yr3 engineering students are allowed to take year 1 econs core modules but SoE students are not allowed to take modules from Engineering Schools). These modules are almost the same among other UK institutions pure Econs degree therefore you need not worry about being disadvantaged.
SoE, however, is only 2 years old. We have only 5 professors (and two more will be joining the next academic year) and one PhD student (who will be your tutor). But, the plus point is the school is pretty small. We know each other by name within the School. Being small school also means that professors would know you better and thus, they're in better stance on being your referee. The professors in SoE, in my opinion, are very at their own field. However, being a small schools, the professors would sometimes teach other modules that they are not expert in. Despite that, you will still able to score it well if you put in more effort. (because, really, it's university. you will not be spoon-fed like what you and I used to have..ever again!)
Access to sources is quite good in general are quite good as compare to UM and other Public Institutions. However, if you are an avid economics students who wish to specialise in Economics researches.. you'll be disappointed that they didn't subscribe to AEA journal. (The librarian said there was only just 1 PhD students and they did not expect the undergrads to benefit from subscribing it.) Nevertheless, you do get adequate access to other prominent journals.
I have mixed view on the learning environment. To me, the students in SoE are just like other schools; you get the lazy ones, the noisy ones but you sometimes also get the amazing ones. I can't warrant my comment on this because I haven't been to any other schools aside from PHIR, which the latter was like being in a United Nations conferences every class. Being Asians as we are (though 50% of us are Internationals, there are mostly from Asian countries), we are more submissive and less 'rebellious' in class. (PHIR would be the opposite). I don't know how significant this makes.. but BSc Econs has the second highest entry requirement after Pharmacy (same entry requirement with BSc. International Relations). I leave it to you to judge how your peers would be like. In my opinion, I would believe they are still the same (confirmation bias here though). One more thing, you will be able to meet the British exchange students, to know the 'world outside' and to be able to discuss intellectual topics with them if you are unsatisfied with your peers.
Everything is better in the UK campus. The professors are more specialised in their field (and do not tend to teach modules that they are not expert in) and there are more PhD students (means more Tutors). Libraries are bigger and well stocked. Food and access to entertainment are definitely better. Therefore, in terms of teaching, learning and living environment, UK campus is certainly better. Despite that, the exam papers are marked by the UK campus as well as your home campus.. which, imo, guarantees the quality of graduates.
That's all I know... =D Hope you see you this september