Want freedom of self-study - go for it. Need supervision and guidance - stay away. (Surrey Institute of Art and Design)

Member Name: lilia_fellini

Product:	Surrey Institute of Art and Design
Date:	07/03/08 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Perfect if you prefer to be left to your own devices. Great visiting lecturers & real life projects.

Disadvantages: Poor workshop equipment & training. Poor careers service. Shortage of staff. Library opening hours.

I had spent 3 years at this university studying Product Design/Sustainable Futures. I found that the students there were very creative, and if you are a weed-smoking relaxed arty type, especially if you think of doing Ceramics, Glass or any other creative art discipline, you will find a lot of like-minded people there. Paradoxically you will also need to be self-sufficient in your study in order to perform well in your course. If you think you need to be supervised and 'kicked-up-the-arse' in order to achieve - stay away. There is a lot of self study going on there from what I could tell. Animation course proved to be the worst off with all animation students not having a single lecture for a year and no tutor to teach them (for a long time all they had was a very talented but equally underpaid technician, who was they only person to guide the students through their course; he eventually left and I don't blame him). I believe the students complained and the staff shortage had been eventually rectified, but I cannot tell how much better it is now.

As to Product Design Course, the first year was not bad. I have to say the course itself if quite unique and I failed to find anything remotely similar in the UK. They even have Sutainable Design Research Centre (all great, but I don't remember us ever benefiting from having it). We had plenty of lectures and interesting projects to do. I believe they taught us many things we could not have learnt from anywhere else.

From the beginning of the second year it all started downhill. One lecturer went onto the maternity leave and never came back. Our course leader was too busy doing his PhD, so we basically did not see him for a year or so. The most annoying thing was that he still used to ocassionally come to assess our work, and we used always wonder what was the point, since he did not even know the brief and was not involved in any other way. So the course leader (hardly ever present) and the other tutor were the only ones left to teach us. The two used to always contradict each other and it was all very confusing.

On the bright side we did have two major live projects with design consultancies, which gave us oppotunities to enhance our portfolio and even win some money! One guy ended up getting his student design project registered and you can now buy it from John Lewis with his name on the tag (it's a peppermill, if you are interested). We also had quite a few visiting lecturers such as Seymoor&Powell and the guys from Dyson and IDEO coming in. Phil Davies from IDEO even ended up teaching us and that was great!

Workshop. Only one technician who was never available, very poor range of equipment and materials (we only got good quality modelling foam in the end of the third year). We were not given adequate training to enable us to use the workshop with confidence.

Can't say anything about student union - never used to go there. The student village is kind of cute, but very noisy. I ended up living in the house with the MA students to be able to sleep at night. Never rented in Farnham itself, but I did get a notion of that private landlords charged quite a bit for (filthy) student accomodation. Me and my friends ended up living in Woking (more entertainment, shops and jobs, lower rent) and shared a car to uni.

Student services. I had to use them on number of occasions. Don't expect any financial help. The hardship grants are scarce and very hard to obtain. I simply ended up working 20 hours a week to overcome my financial problems myself. Not much support there.

Careers service I found pretty useless.

There is a doctor in site at working hours and a hospital a bit away (can walk there in 20 minutes or 10 minutes by bus) - that was handy.

I had been through a family crisis in the last year of uni, and the consellor service was useless, they did listen to me alright, but that's about all they did. In fact they said they were not there to give advice, but to listen. So I eventually stopped going to see the consellor (each time a different one, which kind of compromises the whole point) figuring that I'd probably be better off talking to my friends, and was right as well.

Language support is amazingly good, however there is only one language support tutor and you will have to book her months in advance. You cannot just drop in. But you get to see her she will not only check your essay for mistakes, but would be happy to discuss your ideas and how to put them on paper. I only wish there were more of her!

The uni is very well equipped for disabled students with wheechair ramps and lifts throughout.

There is a large proportion of international students (probably due to the lower course fees then some other universities). This I liked because you can meet people from all over the world.

The other things I did not like are:

- Library working hours are very short, meaning that you cannot access the library resources and computers after 8pm, or even 5pm sometimes. Design building - the only place where design software was accessible - was usually shut after 7pm.

- Work placement practice is useless, with few industry links and little guidance from staff the responsibility of looking for a placement was left to the students . There were only two or three people who got a placement out of my entire class.

That's it - the decision is yours.

Update 17/04/08: I am now looking for a job and in turns out that the employers in the field expect me to know AutoCAD or Solidworks as my 3D modelling software. I had been taught Concepts Unlimited at uni - the program no one had even heard of! 3D modelling was what I was the best at, too bad all these three years I had been learning how to use the software no one needs! I am now planning to do an AutoCAD course, which is going to cost me another £1700 (it's like another year at uni!) just to improve my chances for employment! Very annoyed!

Summary: University provides facilities for you to succeed in study, but you will have to do it on your own.