Education with the personal touch
Our proposition
Education that is high quality and great value for money, offers you a choice and is delivered with the personal touch.
The personal touch
We’re a small university and this contributes to our excellent learning environment. Our students make friends easily and their tutors and lecturers get to know our students individually.
Over 85% of our seminar classes have fewer than 30 people in them and workshops can be as small as 12, so our students can get their views across and get more out of each class. Our average lecture size is 55, so again our students are part of a smaller group. Each student also has a personal tutor who they can arrange to see whenever they need to – someone who takes an interest in their progress and success and challenge them to do their best work supporting them to become independent learners and work-ready graduates.
High quality
Wherever possible, our courses are accredited or endorsed by relevant professional bodies. Our newest business courses are accredited by the Chartered Management Institute; our nursing and health courses are accredited by the Nursing and Midwifery Council and the Health Professions Council; our online Psychology degree is accredited by the British Psychological Society and our BEd Primary Education is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. This connection with industry helps us make sure we’re teaching our students the things that are valued by employers. All of our students enjoy the highest quality teaching facilities.
Value for money
At Derby we believe in fair fees for quality degrees and we believe in being open and honest with our students. We’ve promised that our courses will be affordable and reasonably priced. So we have three bands of fees that reflect the real cost and of delivering particular courses.All our undergraduate courses are between £1,000 and £2,000 less per year than the £9,000 most universities are charging. Textbooks are not included (because they are available in our libraries), but where there are significant extra costs for a course – for equipment or activities – we have built these into the overall fees. These inclusive fees mean that there are no hidden extras later in the course and students can use their loan to cover these costs.
Our halls of residence also came top for value for money in The Sunday Times league tables 2011.
Choice
We have a wide range of courses that can be studied as single honours or joint honours degrees (where up to three subjects can be combined). Students can study full time, part time or, for about 30 of our courses, online. To ensure a firm academic foundation for our students we use the first stage to teach compulsory modules. During stages two and three, students can diversify to pursue their academic interests and develop specialisms.
There is also huge choice in how students can enhance their CVs. We have very active programmes for placements in industry, volunteering in the community, part time employment, mentoring and leadership, as well as thriving sports teams.
