Dear All, Last night our website was re-launched and given a new look and feel. It's been a long and tortuous process but hopefully we now have a site that is more intuitive for people wanting to find out about our distance-learning and self-study courses. The link is http://www.londonexternal.ac.uk. If you’d like to provide any feedback please do so over our website and it will go directly to the web-team. Many Thanks, Brendan University of London P.S. Not sure if this would be considered by some as a blatant plug so I've posted here under off-topic.
Looks decent enough. I am not too sure about the colour scheme though, especially for the prospective student section. It just seems a bit too bright and garish with at least three shades of purple everywhere.
Ha! Little do ye know. Bright sunshine today and for most of the week to come. I plan on escaping to at least two days of Middlesex-Surrey at Lord's and basking. Angela
My life got a LOT more liveable since I decided to examine NEXT year. Law Tutors OnLine expressed disappointment but I assured them that it is a matter of how slowly I learn and not anything they've failed to do. It's really neat, too...I got especially interested in the fight between Dworkin and Hart over the existence of the Rule of Recognition and I NOW have time to pursue many more readings on the subject. Some of this material has made the dispute MUCH easier to understand. I even cherish the conceit that this additonal reading will help out at exam time. Enjoy the fleeting daylight!
Fleeting? At this time of the year up on parallel 52 it's light from 4am until nearly 10pm ;-) Mind you, all this sunlight can be a bad thing. Clear skies means that there will be a frost tonight. Brrrrrrr. Angela
Angela, Boy I wished I were there. Here in sunny stinking, sticky Houston, the high is supposed to be 93 and the humidity in the high 70's. That factors out to a heat index of 102. Lovely. Just stinking lovely. I have to run on a treadmill at work. If you try to run in this muck, you will die. (LOL). I do wish that the University of London had external degree programs totally online for PhDs. I maybe totally off, but I dont think they have it for history or others.
Mmmmmm. Gorgeous! No, seriously. I really adore hot weather and have no problems with humidity (OK, so that fact that I come from red heads with green eyes on one side of the family and blonds with blue eyes on the other does mean that I tend to walk around like a factor 60 oil slick in the sunlight). It may be sunny here today, but I'm still wearing a sweatshirt in the middle of June: this is not natural! My honeymoon in Sri Lanka (same sort of weather (highs of around 100, lows of about 80 and humidity in the mid 70s (well, except when we were staying in a rain forest)) with the plusses of cricket, great curry, excellent beer and wonderful beaches) was one long battle for the air conditioner remote control as I tried to prevent my husband from turning the bloody thing on. I did let him turn it on one night, though, but that was the day when the thermometer by the pool had read 47! Nope. You'll just wish that you could die ;-) Just imagine that you're a fast bowler in a cricket match in somewhere like Multan (shudder). The external programme used to do PhDs back in the past, but as pretty much every college in the university now does part-time PhDs the PhD programme isn't really needed any more. Besides, given your research focus, it does make a lot more sense for you to do your PhD over on your side of the pond. I just don't understand, though, why US universities are so against part-time or DL PhDs. Hell, even Oxford does part-time PhDs! Angela
Angela, I would gladly change places with you. The heat and the humidity are the reasons that the Astrodome and later retractable roof stadiums ( Reliant Stadium- Houston Texans and Minute Maid Park- Houston Astros) were built. It just doesnt cool off here. It wont cool off until October. Oh wait. The average high this past October was 90. Sheese. Granted it was the hottest October on record. Oh by the way, it snowed 8 inches in Galveston this past December 24. Just danged kooky. There is a scary chance for a hurricane near these parts as well. Just danged kooky. You can have this junk. I know what you mean on the DL programs. It is the entrenched faculty in the different history programs that wont let it happen. I was told that they need the one on one approach to the students. I am hoping that American Military University will be a trend setter and break the ice first. That might change many minds in the future. Just a thought.
I like the new website, it's easier to navigate than the old one. It also sends a very foreign-friendly tone right away with the message on the first page about completing your degree from your home country. Although it never said so, I got the impression from the old website that the programs were geared towards Europe only. If I might make a suggestion, having a section for potential US students, putting things into the American perspective, would be very helpful. I think that UoL could tap into a huge US market if the programs were better explained the "American way".
angela, Well, I too was born away up North and the summer days of my childhood were LONG! But I ALSO remember using headlights at noon in November!
I found the old site easy to navigate, and find the new site easy to navigate. I agree with those who find it's a bit garish, but if your research suggests that color-coding will help prospective students navigate the site, well, that's important too. I didn't find the old site Eurocentric as Bruce did. Angela remarked, "The external programme used to do PhDs back in the past, but as pretty much every college in the university now does part-time PhDs the PhD programme isn't really needed any more." Well, if it's possible to do a PhD through various colleges at the University, that's very exciting, and it would be really helpful for there to be a page explaining how to begin that process. (Alternatively, Angela, if you could elaborate....) -=Steve=-
Re: Re: New look website for University of London Excellent point, Steve, I completely missed that. I think that UoL could really establish themselves in the US by offering Ph.D. programs, given the astronomical cost of US RA programs that are available by DL.
I did have a go at replying last night, but as I'd spent all afternoon at a cricket match (othewise known as a cast-iron excuse to spend all day drinking beer in the sun and talking nonsense ;-), I wasn't making much sense, so here goes again. I've personally got no inside knowledge of why the external programme stopped doing PhDs, although I do know that they were only offered to candidates who already possessed qualifications from UoL, but I'd be willing to bet that the numbers doing a PhD at any time were pretty small. My comments about all of the colleges doing part-time PhDs merely reflect something that, from what I've gathered from the posters here and seen on various US university web sites, I think is much rarer in the US than it is over here: only Oxford, alone of the universities in the UK, actively prohibits part-time study for a PhD across the board. Part-time PhD study is a fact of life over here, to the extent that even Cambridge has decided to allow part-time study across a majority of faculties. This doesn't mean that we have a vast number of distance learning opportunities for potential PhDs, as I don't think any doctorate in the UK, even those that actually describe themselves as DL, is actually pure DL: a residence component of at least a couple of weeks a year is pretty much mandatory for any part-time PhD it does mean is that all the anxious scrabbling around for a PhD programme that's affordable and still doable by somebody who's got employment or homemaking responsibilities they can't afford to relinquish that we see here so often simply just doesn't happen. If, as may happen to be the case, I want to do a Phd part-time on late Roman and Byzantine trade and culture once I've finished my MA, I will be able to apply to Cambridge, UCL, KCL, Birkbeck, the ICS and just about anywhere else I like except for Oxford. In US terms, that's the equivalent of being able to apply to Stanford, Berkeley, UMass, CUNY and just about anywhere except Harvard for a part-time PhD. As for the UoL needing to "really establish" itself, as Bruce commented, I'm afraid it doesn't need to. It contains some of the most academically selective and research-active institutions in the world, and has more than enough applicants for its PhD programmes (both full and part-time) to keep it going for decades and centuries to come. There is absolutely no academic or financial imperative for the external programme or any other constituent part of the UoL to go out and start marketing DL PhDs. As to how to find out whether a college or department will take a part-time PhD student who's not based in the UK, the answer is, as always, have a look at their website and then drop an email to the departmental administrator or to the scholar with whom you're interested in studying. They may say no. In fact they'll probably say no. But occasionally, if you've got a strong research proposal, they may just say yes. However, I would return to my caveat above about residency. The people I know of who've done part-time PhDs whilst still being based over on the other side of the pond have usually done three trips, sometimes more, over to the UK a year (and fares from the US to the UK are usually much higher than fares from here to the US) and spent a week or more here per trip. Given the cost of living in the UK (as somebody based in London I regard going to New York as going somewhere cheap), that's going to add up to almost as many dollars, if not more, than you'd have to pay to your local RA institution. Angela
Re: UofL needing to "establish itself". It is a depressing fact that many, many of the scholars whose original works I am slowly consuming either ARE, or WERE, associated with U of L. Far more than come form Oxbridge.
