Teesside University Reviews 15

No wonder Teesside University has such poor Trustpilot ratings – it clearly reflects the lack of student satisfaction. My experience has been extremely frustrating and unprofessional. It took up to 20 days just to receive my offer letter, and even simple emails take at least three days to get a response.

The CAS team repeatedly makes baseless claims without checking details, and correcting their mistakes adds another 2-3 days per issue. The overall communication is slow, disorganized, and incredibly stressful.

If you are considering studying here, do not even touch this university with a stick. The administrative inefficiency and lack of professionalism make this one of the worst university experiences I have encountered.

My Complaint:
I applied to Teesside University within the official application period. However, throughout the process I received contradictory and incorrect emails. First, I was told I had been accepted, then rejected, and later accepted again. Because of this negligence, my visa process was delayed. In the end, I was informed that my studies were deferred to September 2026.

As a result, I lost one year of my education, I was psychologically ready but left completely stranded, and I also missed the chance to attend other universities. My trust in Teesside University has been completely broken, and I feel deeply disappointed.

Teesside University is nothing but regret.

Just recently finished my undergraduate in engineering. Honestly, this university feels like an experimental university. Most of the lecturers are inexperienced even though they did their best. Most of them aren't from the UK so sometimes it's a struggle with their english, and most of them don't really know how to create a good teaching atmosphere, making the lectures sometimes awkward. There are some good lecturers though. The lecture contents are okay, a bit all over the place, some lectures are not efficient or worth the time, some are decent depending on the lecturer, overall the things we studied feels like it could've been more, or we would've gotten more in other unis, but it does meet the minimum requirement. The facilities are pretty good. Student union's pretty decent. Library's packed with good PCs. Gym's decent. And they keep on expanding the campus so that's pretty good. The student's very diverse but it takes effort to socialise, especially being in engineering. There are not a lot of social events for students, or at least they're not promoted enough that the students actually cared about these events and went. There are a couple clubs in town that are packed with students so that's okay I guess. Overall, again, this uni feels experimental, like they're still trying to figure out how to be a university. I wouldn't recommend this uni to someone looking to actually take their study seriously, especially in something like engineering. But, I've met people studying game designs, animations, arts, sports, and other less serious course and find that they actually enjoyed their time here and got an easier time socialising in those courses. So it really depends.

The quality of education is not existent. Lectures - slides with superficial information, level of primary school, not applicable level, poor, unpracticeable and not useful. There is no depth, no engagement, and no real knowledge—just surface-level .ppt that only touches the basics. Basicqlly you will learn more watching YouTube tutorials and doing datacamp or codeacademy. This is not a higher education, it’s a slideshow marathon, with primary school level knowledge and this was during Masters degree!

Useless waste of money. Don't go here for education and networking. Absolute dumpster.

I phoned in 6 times asking for a course specific person to ring me back and I emailed senior staff 3 times asking about computing masters degrees for my son, who has been diagnosed with a neurodiversity. Still waiting 6 weeks later. Nobody has made any effort to reply. I asked about the government bursary to encourage people with neurodiversity into ict programs… the phone line was always “leave a message” which I did (in February). I even asked the sports bursary team for advice… their reply, bless them, was “come down to Teesside uni’s library and ask around”…as least they answered the phone! I can only imagine how chaotic their degree programs might be.

Half way through distant learning studies. Every tutor so far has been an arse! I haven’t asked for any help and when I ask simple questions regarding topics or assignments get a very blunt response as if they really cannot be bothered to help. Thought it was just one tutor but so far each subject has been the same. Makes distant learning very stressful. Really really disappointed.

Terrible establishment, more concerned with wokery than education. Don’t go there.

I did an engineering top up degree online. It was a miserable experience. The PowerPoint presentations that were available to us each week were poor and the formulas were misaligned with random characters overlaying them from time to time. The PowerPoints were accompanied by audio files. Each weekly audio file was from a lecturer giving a class, but they wandered around - away from the microphone. A lot of it was indistinct, and I eventually gave up listening to them. At times I was so desperate for help, but none was forthcoming from the university. They couldn't care less whether you passed or failed, once you had paid. I feel so sad and let down from my experience with Teesside. I regret spending the time and money at Teesside. It did not meet my expectations and has not helped me.

I came to Teesside University to study a CELTA course from September 2023 to December 2023. I was badly bullied by one of the tutors here, Johnathan Brook, English Language Tutor. He had taken an extreme dislike to me as I struggled with disabilities. This treatment caused a flare up with my health issues and I suffered considerably at the hands of this tutor. The more I declined, the worse I was treated. After the course ended, I submitted a complaint which was escalated to his HR department and action was taken against him but he still works there. I also submitted a link to a YouTube video where he is being disrespectful towards a student from another country. He made quite a few disrespectful comments about these students during my time there. I also applied for all emails relating to me from all tutors at the English Language department under GDPR and found he had made horrible comments about me in these emails.

I have all the evidence from my complaint, nothing said here is untrue so I am giving my review as I can back up all of my truths provided in this review.

A lot of poor teaching and organisation. Worst part is after being at the university for 6 years they can only give me 2 graduation tickets so one of my parents or my partner is going to have to wait outside alone? Absolutely disgusting they asked about tickets months ago to organise capacity. Don’t go here!

Rubbish admin, terrible online system, terrible unhelpful tutors, terrible all round experience. I was paying for my masters online my own money I didn't get access to one module untill 3 days before a assignment was due so missed all the content quickly cobbled something together. I emailed to say within the 14 days allowed that I no longer wish to do the course but they refused to give money back so stuck doing a course I am no longer happy doing my love for the topic has been diminished I work so hard iny job this was going to be the next step they have ruined this because I can not afford another course. Don't give these people your money or time.

The treatment being given to the international student , especially people of color, is the worst any human could experience. It would have been better Teesside is being opened as a Bank than being called a University. The school never cared about the well-being of the international students but rather to get their money and lie against them to the UKVI so that the UKVI could send them back to their home country. The University is the worst I have experienced in my lifetime. I would never advise anyone to come to this university unless the person wants to experience the worst mental damage in his/her lifetime. How I wished someone had advised me before coming to this school.
If there is rating of -5, i would give the University a rating of -5.

I haven’t even started my course but I want to make a comment about the administration for it. It’s an online masters so I appreciate it is niche but it’s expensive and I am paying for a service like anyone else.

I was told since I buy modules online for the course I would not have to show evidence of my student loan (it says this clearly on their website for the part about my course). The loan would just come to me and then I would pay for the individual modules. For ages I could not access my student loan and didn’t know why. I kept calling the uni and trying to find out why. The student loan company kept saying I was not enrolled at the uni. It took ages to get a straight answer from the uni about why I was not enrolled. I was told lots of different reasons why I was not enrolled and was completely getting the run around while I was physically very ill at the time. It turns out I could not fully enrol without them having evidence of my tuition fees despite being told otherwise from the outset and because I could not fully enrol with them I could not get access from the student loan company to the tuition fees. It took about 3 weeks to get the tuition fees then when I finally did and went to buy the necessary course module it was shown on their university shop for 2 different prices which are hugely different. I’m still waiting to find out why and under pressure to buy the module in a limited time frame. Meanwhile I have received an email saying I have asked to withdraw from the course and please complete the necessary form which is totally confusing.

The whole process has been stressful and not what you would expect when spending so much money. I have wondered at several points whether I should proceed which is what has brought me to read other people’s reviews.

PLEASE DO NOT GO TO THIS UNIVERSITY. It's the worst place I've ever wasted my time with. I applied a year before my course started (for a top up degree). The next year after insisting a lot!!! they replyed me a month before the course started that I was accepted. I packed my stuff and left to england, especifically middlesbrough. Once I was there I quarantined for 2 weeks, but on the second week I notice something weird about my application. I spoke to them and the useless international management team told me I wasn't accepted in that course, that there had been a mistake in the UCAS update and that they offered me to do the 3 year degree. I was freaking mad, I grabed my stuff and left to my country, but I wrote them I was going to sue them for negligence. 3 days later they sended me an email saying that they could accept me in the course I wanted. I refused inmediatelly. What an awful place, stay away, choose another option wisely, because they are the most unprofessional university I've ever seen.

Great campus and facilities, shame about the town!