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Social Policy and Criminology

Entry requirements


A level

A,B,B

General Studies accepted

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

32

International Baccalaureate Diploma: 6,5,5 at Higher Level to include English with a minimum of 32 points overall

Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)

DDM-DDD

Typical offers when offered in combination with A Levels: •BTEC Diploma DM-DD plus B in A level •BTEC Subsidiary Diploma D plus BB-AB in A levels

UCAS Tariff

128

We've calculated how many Ucas points you'll need for this course.

About this course


Course option

4years

Full-time with time abroad | 2024

Subjects

Criminology

Social policy

**Understand what social policy and criminology teach us about our societies. Learn how these subjects individually provide insights into social problems and harms and when studied together, offer an exciting lens on the world around us.**

Our Social Policy and Criminology Joint Honours degree will offer you an exciting opportunity to examine issues which strike at the heart of many contemporary political and media debates. This Joint Honours course combines popular degree subjects that offer complementary insights into a range of social problems and social harms. You will be encouraged to consider the reasons why they are designated as being either 'crimes' or 'social policy' issues and therefore are dealt with through contrasting 'welfare' or 'criminal justice' responses. Students who meet the requisite academic performance criteria will be offered the opportunity to undertake a specialist placement during the second year of their degree programme.

The Social Policy and Criminology Joint Honours is an interdisciplinary programme suitable for students who are currently studying a range of subjects at A-level and who have a particular interest in a wide range of topic areas, such as poverty, homelessness, crime, prisons, drugs and alcohol addiction. Your degree will follow the same programme as the standard degree in Years 1 and 2. However, your third year will be spent abroad at a university in the EU or elsewhere in the world. After completing your year abroad, you will return for your fourth and final year to the same degree programme.

Modules

For a full list of modules and a module descriptions, please visit course page on our website https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/social-policy/social-policy-and-criminology-year-abroad-ba.aspx

Tuition fees

Select where you currently live to see what you'll pay:

Channel Islands
£9,250
per year
England
£9,250
per year
Northern Ireland
£9,250
per year
Republic of Ireland
£9,250
per year
Scotland
£9,250
per year
Wales
£9,250
per year

The Uni


Course location:

University of Birmingham

Department:

School of Social Policy

Read full university profile

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.

71%
Criminology
75%
Social policy

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

81%
Staff make the subject interesting
86%
Staff are good at explaining things
85%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
74%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

79%
Library resources
86%
IT resources
89%
Course specific equipment and facilities
73%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

96%
UK students
4%
International students
20%
Male students
80%
Female students
76%
2:1 or above
11%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

A
B
B

Social policy

Teaching and learning

83%
Staff make the subject interesting
88%
Staff are good at explaining things
82%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
72%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

79%
Library resources
82%
IT resources
89%
Course specific equipment and facilities
55%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

90%
UK students
10%
International students
25%
Male students
75%
Female students
84%
2:1 or above
14%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

A
B
B

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.

£20,000
med
Average annual salary
58%
high
Employed in a role where degree was essential or beneficial

Top job areas of graduates

12%
Welfare and housing associate professionals
11%
Sales assistants and retail cashiers
9%
Protective service occupations

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.

Social policy

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.

£21,000
high
Average annual salary
58%
med
Employed in a role where degree was essential or beneficial

Top job areas of graduates

17%
Business, finance and related associate professionals
12%
Sales assistants and retail cashiers
11%
Sales, marketing and related associate professionals

Just over 1,600 students graduated in social policy in 2015, which makes it one of the smaller social studies subjects. This is a popular subject at Masters level — 750 Masters in social policy were awarded last year - and so a lot of the more sought-after jobs in management and research tend to go to social policy graduates with postgraduate degrees. For those who leave university after their first degree, then jobs in social care (especially community and youth work) and education, the police, marketing and human resources and recruitment are popular — along with local government, although there are fewer of those jobs around than in the past. This degree is a bit less reliant on London for jobs than other similar subjects, so if you'd like to work outside the capital, it might be worth considering - although the jobs still tend to be in big cities.

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.

£20k

£20k

£25k

£25k

£29k

£29k

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.

Social policy

The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.

£20k

£20k

£25k

£25k

£29k

£29k

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.

Explore these similar courses...

Lower entry requirements
University of Lincoln | Lincoln
Criminology and Social Policy
BA (Hons) 3 Years Full-time with time abroad 2024
UCAS Points: 104
Higher entry requirements
Queen's University Belfast | Belfast
Criminology and Social Policy
BA (Hons) 3 Years Full-time with time abroad 2024
UCAS Points: 128-152
Same University
University of Birmingham | Birmingham
Social Policy and Criminology
BA (Hons) 3 Years Full-time with time abroad 2024
UCAS Points: 128

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This is what the university has told Ucas about the course. Use it to get a quick idea about what makes it unique compared to similar courses, elsewhere.

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Course location and department:

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Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF):

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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).

This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.

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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.

You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.

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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?

Have a question about this info? Learn more here