Criminology (with foundation year)
Coventry University
UCAS Code: LCDF | Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) - BA (Hons)
Entry requirements
UCAS Tariff
5 GCSEs at A-C/4-9 including Maths and English, and at least one A2 level or a BTEC equivalent qualification.
About this course
The foundation year of this Coventry University degree will be delivered from our CU Coventry campus. Course delivery from year 1 of the degree onwards will be from our Coventry University campus.
This course aims to provide you with a solid grounding for you to develop a career relating to criminology.
The foundation year aims to provide a thorough understanding of legal principles and best practice. With a focus on European, national and local contexts, this programme explores the development of legislation with core academic skills. Students who successfully complete their foundation year will then progress onto the Criminology BA (Hons) degree within Coventry University’s School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences.
The degree introduces you to crime as a dynamic process in a rapidly changing world linking foundational principles and emerging trends to explore its impact on daily life. In your third year you will specialise in a range of areas of crime, victimology, criminal justice, and crime prevention emphasising key transferable skills in preparation for graduate level employment in a global market.
During your degree you will have the opportunity to link major theoretical perspectives to contemporary issues and debates – putting theory into practice. You will also be able to reflect analytically and critically on a wide range of issues and emerging trends relating to crime, control, and criminal justice in local and global contexts, before applying creative solutions to crime problems, and to systemic failures in dealing with crime.
**Key benefits of the degree**
* Applied approach designed to develop the skills required for graduate employment in various criminal justice roles
* Expert speakers from agencies involved in criminal justice complement and contextualise your understanding (subject to availability)
* International perspective on crime
* Have opportunities to participate in international field trips – previous criminology trips have included South Africa, USA, Finland, Estonia, and Poland
See our website for further details.
Modules
The foundation year offers an introduction to your chosen subject and supports you to develop the skills required for degree-level study with modules including:
* Introduction to the English Legal System
* Contract Law
* Criminal Law and Practice
* Academic and Professional Skills for Lawyers
This course has a common degree first year.
The common first year enables you to work alongside students doing similar courses to you, to widen your knowledge and exposure to other subject areas and professions. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with other students, so you can share your insights and experience which will help you to develop and learn.
If you discover an interest in a specific subject you have studied, upon successful completion of your first year, you could swap degrees with another course in your common first year (subject to meeting progression requirements).
Common first year courses
Criminology BA (Hons)
Criminology and Law BA (Hons)
Criminology and Psychology BA (Hons)
Year Two
Year one aims to give you a thorough grounding in the study of crime, criminal behaviour, justice, and the law in a global context. Working alongside students from Criminology and Law and Criminology and Psychology, you will not only seek to develop the knowledge you need to progress in your degree, but also be encouraged to think critically about the issues, see crime from legal and moral viewpoints, and be creative in finding solutions to problems.
Placement Year
There’s no better way to find out what you love doing than trying it out for yourself, which is why a work placement* can often be beneficial. Work placements usually occur between your second and final year of study. They’re a great way to help you explore your potential career path and gain valuable work experience, whilst developing transferable skills for the future.
If you choose to do a work placement year, you will pay a reduced tuition fee* of £1,250. For more information, please go to the fees and funding section. During this time you will receive guidance from your employer or partner institution, along with your assigned academic mentor who will ensure you have the support you need to complete your placement.
Final Year
In the final year you will apply the knowledge from your first two years in the more specialised areas of violence and exploitation, organised crime, state crime, and deviant forms of leisure, such as drugs and dark tourism. You will also have the opportunity to develop specific interests and expertise to suit your career plans through your research project in which you will produce a research paper on your own contribution to knowledge.
We regularly review our course content, to make it relevant and current for the benefit of our students. For these reasons, course modules may be updated. Before accepting any offers, please check the website for the most up to date course content. For full module details please check the course page on the Coventry University website.
*For further information please check the course page on the Coventry University website
Assessment methods
The learning outcomes of modules, assignments and projects will be clearly stated. Your work will be marked according to how well you achieve these learning outcomes and your final feedback will refer to each outcome, as well as provide an overall percentage grade.
Assessment methods vary and may include practical class and project performance, written practical reports, project thesis, oral presentations, tutorial tasks and assessments which take place at the end of each six-week block.
Tuition fees
Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:
The Uni
CU Coventry
School of Psychological, Social and Behavioural Sciences
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?
The stats below 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
Teaching and learning
Assessment and feedback
Resources and organisation
Student voice
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.
£19k
£22k
£26k
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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