The University Of Manchester

I literally hate this university so much I wish I could give a negative review. I just finished a one year MA here and honestly don’t think I could have done any longer without going INSANE. I have met some of the most unhelpful people and would recommend literally any other institution in this country - I had a lovely experience at my undergrad but this was another type of rage having to deal with UoM. Below I list some of the negative aspects of this experience: - IT issues constantly. At the beginning of the year student login was completely messed up and some professors had the nerve to gaslight me into thinking it was my fault I couldn’t log in because I couldn’t read instructions??? (It was a system issue after all). I get wrong emails all the time, plus websites and such are always irritating and faulty - Closing the library for the majority of time MA students were completing their dissertation which felt so disrespectful, especially considering we pay more than undergraduates for this course and to have access to these facilities. (The loan couldn’t even cover my tuition it was SO expensive and for what?) - My dissertation supervisor showed up late to meetings and did not seem to answer many of my questions, nor could he provide any helpful feedback on my topic. Though he could help with some of the methodological concerns, I didn’t feel heard or respected at all. I only had two meetings with him (in one of which he came 10 mins late and left 10 mins early!!). I chose not to contact him for the rest. - Staff do not seem to be available for help most of the time, with office hours lasting about 10 minutes per student and no longer, there is little time to actually talk about research and discuss assignments with professors. Except for one or two professors kind enough to do so, most did not seem to care. - At one point in the year I was struggling with some personal issues and the SOSS hub was not at all helpful. In asking about what my options were with extensions or what would happen if i had to do retakes the only answer i was provided was "! don't know". I asked if I could be referred to anyone on the university or course and all they replied with was "I don't know". - There was such a difference in how each lecturer would grade, which was to be expected, but a lot of times feedback was lacking and mostly pointed out grammatical errors or mild structural mistakes instead of feedback on the actual content and argument. Being given a low grade and not being given a real explanation on why just seems like every professor can choose not to like your work and that's enough reason. - Often professors would fail to upload material on blackboard, on one occasion a module stopped uploading content on week 3 and only uploaded the entire course of content about a week before it ended. - The library website is often faulty and yields completely different results from the search criteria, l've had times the results didn’t have a single word i had in the search bar in them, just completely unrelated. - There was no sense of community within the course with many students not even speaking the language and never engaging in seminars. There was little effort from the course organisers and most professors to cultivate a better community feel. - The course was advertised with certain modules and upon the start many failed to run. As someone who chose the course because of its content, it was disappointing to see it so limited in practice. It just feels like the course was put together sloppily. There was so much potential and there are people and staff on the course who were so willing to make it work but did not have the chance to so so because of its overall poor organisation I suppose. I have also raised these complaints via a couple student surveys, voiced them to my peers and the odd professor who actually cared. I hope something is being done about it…