University of Sunderland Reviews 53

Exceptional Psychology department.
I attended UoS from 2015-2018 and it was an amazing experience. The staff are professional, knowledgeable and supportive.
The course was well organised, engaging and informative. Teaching was excellent and my experience will last me a lifetime.
My best experience in education to date.
I highly recommend the Psychology department.

Very poor, I have a traumatic experience with Sunderland university as an international student applied for my deposit refund I made via mobile transfer, from denying to acknowledgeing the money and up to date I have not received my money even after meeting up All their criteria for refund keep getting wait till 6 weeks. Quite an unprofessional experience and fraud to an international student

university of Sunderland is just a biz that offer their brand and certificates to many colleges out there. I was a senior member of a college and they offer their University of Sunderland certificate to my college without provide any courses or practice..etc student can get their certifcate/diploma..etc All we have to do is to provide the exam to students and the exam paper not from University of Sunderland but it is from my own college, as long as the student pass the exam, they can get a certificate from my college and a certifcate from university of sunderland. in some courses, we create a new paper to students that pay to for university sunderland certificate so they will feel they are taking the university of sunderland courses and exam. Try to ask and investigate this with all the university of sunderland students that get their certificate, all them passed the exam but the paper are different and some even just take their own college's paper and exam. Actually many college and institution operation staff they know about this. but they just want to earn extra money by providing extra qualification and upgrade their own branding to the market.

Wow just wow!

Looking at doing an Engineering Masters Degree and asking for them desist n the 5 spam marketing emails a day I received a really rude response from the enrolment team sating “go elsewhere,”

£8,500 per annum for such a disgraceful attitude.

Fine go elsewhere, wonder how long this Establishment will treating students with such a poor ego!

As I’m a high earner and self funding, i won’t recommend this establishment and certainly won’t attend now!

zero stars from me!!!

I received a conditional offer from the University of Sunderland (main campus) in May 2025, with the only condition being to pay a £5,750 deposit. After confirming seat availability through their official representative in Bangladesh, I paid the deposit on June 20.

Just five days later, I received an email stating that the program had been closed and my offer had been withdrawn due to a high volume of applications. The university promised a refund within 6 weeks — but that never happened.

Despite multiple emails to the International Office, Student Casework, Finance, and even involving my aunt (who is in the UK and paid the deposit), no one has properly responded. On August 11 — 7 weeks after my application was withdrawn — I was told that my refund was now approved and I should wait another 6 weeks. So the timeline basically restarted.

It’s now almost 10 weeks since the withdrawal, and I’ve received no refund, no proper communication, and no resolution. Because of this delay, I missed the Fall 2025 intake despite having an offer from other universities. This has caused severe stress and financial problems.

I’m deeply frustrated and request the University of Sunderland to process my refund immediately and respond to my complaints. This situation is unacceptable for any student, especially international ones.

Occupational Therapy degree, absolutely awful. Chaotic, badly taught, death by PowerPoint. Made to feel not good enough all the way through. No support at all. Go to Teeside or Northumbria..
Anywhere but here.

i have been trying to enrol for the LLM law for weeks now. I have called , emailed with no response. I get told that i will get a call back and i never get it, im told my emails are not containing the right documents when i can see the documents on my sent email. so far im not finding it easy nor helpful to get enrolled on this course .

Modern day scam, avoid at all costs ^^

I am not surprised to read the reviews about the way staff are treated. The Dickensian approach to staff has long been imbedded at this institution and it looks like it hasn’t changed. Any journalist wanting to investigate the scandalous decades worth of employment abuse by the University would, if done properly, have a mammoth of a story. Academics have sometimes had to work 90 hours weeks just to do the work of three or four. All in a working atmosphere of bullying and fear of being called out. People keep quiet for their own sakes when really they should be clubbing together to have the institutions and its harmful practises exposed and stopped. This place is poisonous to work in Those who rise through the ranks know it, but have kept quiet, comply and as such are part of its problem. Unbelievable that many claim
To be on the side of the downtrodden when they’re part of the system itself. Where are the whistle blowers? Can I suggest we set up a Facebook page for whistle blowers? HR have ways of keeping people quiet and with the help of lawyers. The Victorian periods of worker mistreatment hasn’t anything on this place.

I did a masters in law online.

I found the course useful and well organised the staff clearly busy and managing a lot but were helpful.

The assignments useful and informative.

The graduation was excellent and and the staff were super friendly and helpful which made the event an extremely positive experience.

I enrolled on this programme as I have a long-standing interest in law and was attracted by the prospect of researching 12 different subjects. Each module is self-contained and requires reading material (available online through the university library), engaging with fellow students and tutors through the portal, completing exercises and submitting assignments.
The tutors were very supportive throughout my period of study with their helpful guidance and constructive feedback.
One thing I would suggest to prospective students is (if possible) buy one of the recommended texts for each module for easy reference, particularly regarding case law.
Having completed the LLM with a Distinction, I strongly recommend the programme to anyone who wishes to develop and extend their knowledge and understanding of law. Assuming the necessary commitment, this is a worthwhile and rewarding course of study (although somewhat challenging at times!)

Paid £11000+ to read off of a PowerPoint all year. Very little practical aspect in regards to my course. Charge extortionate prices for parking.

The University of Sunderland: where dreams come to die. Student complaints: useless. Course: waste of money.
But then again, this reflects the state of the UK's education system as a whole.

It has come to our attention that during a recent writing retreat event at the University of Sunderland in London, a concerning incident occurred involving Dr. Manesha Peiris ( manesha.peiris(at)sunderland.ac.uk ) and a student.

Despite expectations of professionalism and conflict resolution skills from a teacher with the title Doctor, it is disheartening to learn that Dr. Peiris resorted to involving security and physically removing the student from the event following an argument.

It is important to note that the student maintained a professional and polite demeanor throughout the interaction, raising questions about the necessity of such drastic measures. Dr. Manesha Peiris's actions, seemingly aimed at publicly embarrassing and morally assaulting the student, are troubling and do not reflect the expected conduct of an educator.

This incident has been promptly reported to the relevant authorities, including the student admin department, the student union, and the program manager, Mr. Alessandro Ferrazza. However, the response from Mr. Ferrazza has been disappointing, as no answers or actions have been provided. The apparent effort to silence and disregard the incident is concerning, as it undermines the well-being and respect of students within the university community.

It is evident that a student who knows how to express themselves and assert their position should not face such treatment at the University of Sunderland in London...

This university cares so little about their staff and students, that they work their staff to the point of complete and total destruction and then simply wash their hands of them. In turn, this provides a disastrous and chaotic experience for the students because the staff are too busy trying to cling on to their last vestiges of sanity.

Then, they send around ‘wellbeing’ surveys to pretend that they care. Honestly, I kid you not. You absolutely couldn’t make it up. What a joke!

This university won’t ever care about you. They just want your money.

I joined a LLM, on the day of the First course the online platform canvas was not working so I could no take part of it.

I have not gotten any solution in many weeks about the fees paid on it. Now I have submit a withdrawal and no one answer my email for weeks. I feel scammed. But I get all the time please pay for your next course emails but I have no answer on the refund of first modul… I call them, I write them and there no one at the phone no email answer I will have to take legal matter

I recently completed the online MSC course and although I feel like I learned a lot, most of it was self-taught through other online resources in order to complete the assignments. The quality of the modules were inconsistent, with usually 5-10 minute lectures per week. You are supposed to contribute to discussion boards every week, but the tutors do not engage in them so the usefulness of them is limited. Feedback on assignments was usually 5 bullet points at most, so not much to learn from. You have to be ready to mostly teach yourself the content.
The communication was also usually extremely poor, sometimes having to follow up several times for a response (if ever). I was marked down significantly once on an assignment for being over the word limit (I don't think I was), and despite reaching out to the module leader and the student success team a total of eight times and being promised they would resolve it, it never was and I eventually gave up. I think communication for an online course is one of the most important aspects, so was extremely disappointed by my experience.

Just would like to say a massive THANK YOU to Alistair In the 3D printing department.. I needed 2 small plastic custom push in clips making to complete a project. He was very nice,polite and helpful, He made exactly what I needed with top quality craftsmanship.. THANK YOU 🫡

I just stumbled on the really negative reviews by chance and thought I'd share my own experience for balance. I enrolled on the online Computer Science with Data Science Msc in March this year and have been genuinely impressed so far. I opted for the part time two year course as I also have a stressful full time job. This makes it hard to meet the demands of the course, however I have found the teaching to be excellent. While the lectures are brief, they are supplemented with well-chosen reading materials. For the modules completed so far, I have found the module content to be well structured, and suitably challenging which is what I expect at the MSc level.. The marking scheme included with the assignment briefs are also very clear. My only minor gripe would be for more specific and detailed feedback on assignments as on a few occasions I have not fully understood the explanations as to where I've lost marks. I still have over a year to go before I finish my MSc and I'm really looking forward to the modules ahead.

I enrolled in the MSc Computer Science with Data Science program in January 2023, expecting a quality education under the University of Sunderland's name. However, the reality has been far from satisfactory.

The course, unfortunately, is not directly conducted by the University of Sunderland but is outsourced to an external company using the university's name.

The delivery of each module primarily consists of low-quality videos of professors in dimly lit living rooms reading off PowerPoint slides. Access to essential readings through the online library has been inconsistent, hindering our ability to access critical resources for learning.

The assessment structure is equally flawed. For example, our first assignment involved us submitting an A4 poster, but the assessment criteria seemed impossible to meet in this format. It was almost like we needed a 1000 word essay at minimum to meet the criteria.

We were instructed in the assignment brief to submit the poster as a PDF but then after waiting weeks over the deadline to recieve our marks we were told we had submitted it wrong and needed to make it a word doc.... It was very difficult in my situation and when I coverted it to a word doc it completely changed the format. Like who makes a poster as a word doc?

Another example was despite the criteria specifying a need for a minimum of 10 academic sources, the lecturer instructed us to use a maximum of 4 due to the poster format. This discrepancy made it nearly impossible to meet the criteria within the constraints of a poster. This obviously explained why we could see the average mark across the whole class for this assignment was a fail at 30%.

What's more frustrating is the response from instructors and university staff when these concerns were raised. Rather than addressing the issues, we were met with dismissive comments, suggesting that our class simply wasn't accustomed to Master's degree standards.

My attempts to seek resolution by reaching out to the module leader and the student success team were in vain. Despite voicing my concerns, the university's communication has been solely focused on soliciting payments for upcoming modules, with no acknowledgment or resolution of the ongoing problems.

Honestly this whole course is a complete scam, and its disgusting that the University of Sunderland allows it. You can see by their replies to these reviews that they don't care at all. I could say so much more about the course but honestly I can't be bothered anymore. It was my biggest waste of money in my life.