Our five-year BA Criminology and American Studies (including foundation year and year abroad), will be suitable for you if your academic qualifications do not yet meet our entrance requirements for the four-year version of this course and you want a program that increases your subject knowledge as well as improves your academic skills in order to support your academic performance.
This five-year course includes a foundation year (Year Zero), followed by a further three years of study, plus a study abroad year or term. During your Year Zero, you study three academic subjects relevant to your chosen course as well as a compulsory academic skills module, with the additional English language for non-English speakers.
You are an Essex student from day one, a member of our global community-based at the most internationally diverse campus university in the UK.
After successful completion of Year Zero in our Essex Pathways Department, you progress to complete your course with our Interdisciplinary Studies Centre.
Our course gives you an excellent understanding of the global patterns increasingly found in criminal justice policies and criminal offenses. We take a social view of crime, a view that links crime to issues of power, resources, rights, ()equality, governance, and culture. This leads us to ask, for example, why certain groups of people are more likely than others to become offenders, why certain kinds of offenders are more likely than others to be caught, how some governments commit ‘state crime’, and why so many people are simultaneously fearful of, yet fascinated by, crime.