Hello,

I completed the MSc in Conservation at UCL last year, and my experience was so bad that I wanted to let you know about it:

I had a good background on conservation before doing the masters, so I aimed to gain more skills, update my knowledge, learn new techniques and so, while boosting my cv through the MSc. However, what I found was that most of the students had little or no background on this subject so the lectures offered very basic information, if there were any lectures, because despite being sold as a 'taught programme', in some cases there was no lectures at all. More disappointing was that the course convenor literally would not move a finger for the students.

An example of this is that for the assessment of a module, students were meant to do very complicated stats and had had only one very confusing lecture on stats, many students revolved in this case, but no measures were taken to solve this problem. Another time, I had a discussion about this issue (not being taught) with a lecturer who took us on a fieldtrip abroad in a module about management and wanted us to draw a management plan for a protected area, but we did not interview anybody working in the protected area who would tell us about how they manage it or about the issues concerning the protected area, we did not even get any lecture or clue about how a good management plan should be, which aspects it should take into account, etc. instead, we spent 6 days doing a vegetation and soil survey with very inappropriate methods (for the vegetation survey we had photocopies with pictures of plant species taken from google images), when I told the lecturer my thoughts his response was 'this is a postgraduate course and you just need to make the little effort of searching on google other management plans' and I answered to that 'I have not moved into the expensive city of London and paid the expensive tuition fees of this taught programme to be told to look for this information in google'. Moreover, the fieldtrips, the costs of which are not included in the tuition fees, were booked on the last minute by the department without asking the students, and for instance, on this field trip abroad they booked the flight tickets just 2 weeks before the departure and accommodation at a 4* hotel which was quite far away from the protected area, so 3 vans had to be rented as well, you can work out that it was no cheap at all... but there is even more, for this fieldtrip which they had been doing for years, they had no proper road maps (so we would use those toy maps given to tourists on the airport!) no even an emergency cell phone (the lecturer and other two assisstant lecturers who came on the fieldtrip did not even know the others' phone numbers!).

Really, I could tell you so many things that you would not believe it. And they still claim it is the 'leading course on nature conservation in the UK'!

(to be continued)

Par for the course for MSc's it seems... Naturally I cant speak for this course, but in general it seems that no-one is satisfied with their MSc, even those from top-ranking unis. Plus there is always the grass-is-always-greener phenomenon ;) That said, it all depends on what course you go for and what you intend to get out of it, as I went into mine with the attitude that I was going to rinse it for all it's worth (and expand my study and reading outside what was required), as someone inexperienced in the field, and am coming away in a month and a half's time very satisfied (hope I still will be anyway...!). But yes there are always complaints about organisation, the motivation of lecturers who were originally employed as researchers, and of course the question 'where is my money going'.

Bottom line: check what you want to get from a masters, and what is it worth... and never, even in the best uni in the world, expect to get it just handed to you on a plate!

Also, two students quitted the course soon after the beginning, and some others (including me) were about to do it, but I had done a great investement so I decided to complete the course, 'I won't learn many things, but at least I'll have that on my cv'. The thing is that UCL may be a reputated university in the UK, but for employers abroad there's Cambridge, Oxford or nothing else. As a result, I have the same job as before, and I am lucky, because other students did not even get a job, neither abroad nor in the UK!

In my opinion, doing this MSc is only worth for career changes who intend to do a PhD in the UK afterwards. If you check the website you'll read 'This highly successful degree programme saw its first students graduate in 1960, and nearly 80% of its graduates have gone on to secure posts related to conservation', well, maybe nearly 80% of the students who graduated in 1960 got secure posts related to conservation but I do not absolutely believe this is true for recent graduates.

Hope it is of some help and please feel free to ask me anything else!