Criminology (Professional Placement Year)
Bath Spa University
UCAS Code: 383M | Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) or Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BA/BSc (H)
Bath Spa University
UCAS Code: 383M | Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) or Bachelor of Science (with Honours) - BA/BSc (H)
Entry requirements
A level
Grades BBB-BCC preferred.
Access to HE Diploma
Typical offers for applicants with Access to HE will be the Access to HE Diploma or Access to HE Certificate (60 credits, 45 of which must be Level 3, at Merit or higher).
International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme
A minimum of 32 points are required.
Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)
Extended Diploma grades from Distinction Distinction Merit (DDM) to Distinction Merit Merit (DMM) accepted in any subject.
T Level
Grade Merit preferred.
UCAS Tariff
We've calculated how many Ucas points you'll need for this course.
About this course
**Investigate, scrutinise and understand the causes and consequences of crime with our Criminology degree.**
- An interdisciplinary programme of study and a broad range of staff expertise.
- Examines crime, justice and punishment at local, national and transnational levels of society.
- A theoretical, empirical and applied education in Criminology to develop your knowledge and skills.
We're fascinated by crime. Turn on the television or search for something online and you'll soon encounter images, reports and programmes about crime, justice and punishment. Crime saturates media and popular culture, suggesting both our enduring fascination with wrongdoing and its consequences, and crime's status as an ongoing social problem.
But, what's the story behind these representations of crime? Criminology explores the causes, motivations and patterns of criminal conduct. In addition to improving our knowledge and understanding of crime, criminology also informs policies and practices in policing, law, criminal justice and punishment.
With our Criminology degree, you'll study crime from a variety of approaches, gain practical and relevant experience, and develop a range of transferable skills that you can take into a range of careers and employment sectors.
**More about the Professional Placement Year**
A Professional Placement Year (PPY), traditionally known as a sandwich year, is where you undertake a period of work with an external organisation for between 9-13 months. The placement occurs between your second and final years of undergraduate study. You can engage in multiple placements to make up the total time and are required to source the placement(s) yourself, with support from the Careers team. The PPY Bursary can make work experience more accessible, with students undertaking a PPY able to receive between £500 and £1,500 to be used towards placement costs such as travel, food, workwear or accommodation.
Modules
In year one, you’ll learn about the research traditions of criminology and be introduced to key concepts, theories and issues. You’ll investigate different types of crime such as property crime, sexual and violent crime, homicide, corporate crime, anti-social behaviour and drug use. You’ll also learn about criminal law and criminal justice agencies and institutions.
Optional modules will increase your understanding of psychological and social dimensions of crime. You’ll study models of individual personality and behaviour, and visualise and analyse key sources of social science data. You’ll also study a complementary subject.
In year two, you’ll study contemporary debates in criminology, criminal justice, and the psychology of crime, and train in research methods and crime mapping techniques.
You can choose from a number of optional modules to create a programme tailored to your personal interests. You can investigate the ecology of crime, delve more deeply into the social divisions associated with crime, study justice and punishment, or explore crime in the media and popular culture.
Your third year is a Professional Placement Year.
In your final year, you’ll undertake an original piece of criminological research in an area that interests you, along with comparative study of criminal justice and penality in a global context.
Again, you can select from a range of modules, a number of which highlight the global dimensions of crime and justice. There will be opportunities to undertake a voluntary placement in an organisation relevant to the criminal justice sector.
Assessment methods
We use a range of assessments to gain a comprehensive measure of your performance. Assignments may include essays, book reviews, examinations, portfolios, creative work, contributions to online resources, presentations, reports, in-class tests, reflective writing and individual and group projects.
Tuition fees
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What students say
We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.
How do students rate their degree experience?
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Sociology
Teaching and learning
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Who studies this subject and how do they get on?
Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)
After graduation
The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.
Sociology
What are graduates doing after six months?
This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.
Top job areas of graduates
We have quite a lot of sociology graduates, although numbers fell last year. But graduates still do pretty well. Most sociology graduates go straight into work when they complete their degrees, and a lot of graduates go into jobs in social professions such as recruitment, education, community and youth work, and housing. An important option for a sociology graduate is social work - and we're short of people willing to take this challenging but rewarding career. Sociology is a flexible degree and you can find graduates from the subject in pretty much every reasonable job — obviously, you don't find many doctors or engineers, but you do find them in finance, the media, healthcare, marketing and even IT. Sociology graduates taking further study often branch out into other qualifications, like teaching, law, psychology, HR and even maths, so don’t think a sociology degree restricts you to just one set of options.
What about your long term prospects?
Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.
Sociology
The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.
£18k
£20k
£24k
Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.
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Post-six month graduation stats:
This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.
It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.
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Graduate field commentary:
The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show
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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.
While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?
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