Central College is a great place to learn, situated right in the centre of Glasgow on Cathedral…read moreStreet. Amongst many other colleges and universities in the area, Central College holds its own, with a great reputation as a business school and for progression to university. I spent two years here, studying Advertising and I was very impressed by the quality of teaching and the hands-on experience that I gained here. The lecturers here are willing to go the extra mile, often using their own industry contacts to bring the course to life and enabling students to get the most out of their learning experience. There are opportunities to travel here too with various courses, including the annual advertising trip to New York, where students are able to visit the some of the biggest advertising agencies in the world and see the industry at work in this amazing atmosphere. With all of that to offer, and they also have their very own Costa Coffee on the first floor of the college, to top it all off. A really great college that I felt equipped me well for my future at university, in my career and beyond.

I first signed up for the Level 5 People Management Diploma in 2022 after a number of calls with a…read moresales advisor. I was told that I could take as long as I needed to complete the course but that my tutor support would only be in place for 18 months. This worked for me as with my full-time job's workload fluctuating a lot, I wasn't certain that I could commit the same amount of time to studying each week. The first assignment involves a 12 month CPD & PDP which, as I didn't work in HR, I didn't have at the time. They recommend you complete the first module as much as you can and then build your CPD & PDP while you continue working on the next modules. I started module 2 only to receive communication that the assessment criteria for module 1 was changing. This meant that some of the work I had already done, would no longer be valid - frustrating. The CIPD update the course regularly based on feedback and I later found out that these changes had been communicated to ICS learn before I started the course, they just chose to leave it until the last minute to tell anyone. Shortly after this, I experienced some family bereavements and experienced a very difficult time. Unable to concentrate on my studies and really struggling personally, I asked for an extension on my tutor support. The person who emailed me back offered to extend my support for 3 months - not great but at least something. Towards the end of last year, I found out that what I'd initially been told on the phone was untrue. Not only does my tutor support end at the end of my slightly extended time, all access to course materials will end too! Had I known this at the time, I'd never have started the course. I'm now in a new role, working long hours and struggling to fit in my studies. If I want to complete the course, I need to pay for each month that I require an extension. I'm back studying and there have already been multiple changes to the assessments (once I've already started working on them), the portal is about to go down while they do some upgrades and generally, the course content is of very poor quality; littered with spelling and grammar mistakes, sometimes to the point I can make no sense of what is being said. I'm learning far more on the job than I do through this course and wish I had never signed up. Over £2500 spent on a course that has caused me nothing but stress.

ICS Learn is an Adult Education provider specialising in courses from A-Levels to IGCSE, also with…read morecourses in marketing, recruitment, accounting and HR. I signed up with ICS for a course to further my career, by social media profile and being one of the few providers to have a Wikipedia page, ICS Learn appears to be one of the largest Distance Learning Providers by the number of users. ICS Learn was founded in 1889 and they state regularly around their website that they have over 100 years of experience, but at points it seems like their website is 100 years old, compared to other distance learning providers I've used in the past including OOL, Open Study College and Cloud Learn, ICS Learn has one of the worst online interfaces in my opinion, too access your course is slow and retires too many clicks, the website also appears really slow to load and it just becomes a rather frustrating, poor and unprofessional experience. The courses are average-priced, often on par with another Glasgow based provider, Cloud Learn. The payment plans, however, seem the most reasonable and don't appear to charge any more for paying in instalments, which other providers do - this sadly is one of the only plus points I can find about ICS Learn. The sign-up process over the phone took a little while longer than usual which made the situation worse when I actually got my product, to be fair to ICS it took slightly quicker to get the course interface loaded than with rival products, which is contradicted by the poor online interface which is the main product offered, and left me with no choice but to exercise my right to cancel - They do have a 14 day refund policy for all courses however. If you're looking for a cheap course and don't mind about the speed of accessing your course information and an overall old-fashioned experience than maybe ICS is an option you'd want to consider, but overall the experience makes it one of the poorer distance learning providers I have used as it did get to the point where I had to cancel almost straight away (luckily I managed to get a refund when other providers wouldn't have done this), the speed of the return policy (and having one in the first place) and pricing mean ICS isn't one to avoid for everyone, and deserves a slightly generous two-star rating.