Sorry to be negative (this is pprune after all!) but after looking over the course syllabus this reeks of a mickey mouse degree. In the first year a compulsory module is PPL theory - sixteen year old kids on the RAF scholarships can ace these exams after a night of cramming. The rest of the three years seems quite close to the ATPL syllabus, but it shouldn't take three years to do something that others do in two whilst working a full-time job.
Yes, I think that's worried much of the rest of the UK University community also - which is presumably why nobody's tried to copy the Leeds course, nor has it any form of external body accreditation. That said, you can teach all of the subjects on the ATPL to a much higher level and it might look the same from the outside.
A key giveaway is that its from the faculty of engineering at a UK university.
Yes, but it's a BSc not a BEng - this is NOT an engineering degree.
You may or not be aware, but a lot of engineering departments are closing or under threat of closure in the UK in this new age of fee based courses. They simply don't attract enough students and therefore course fees to justify their cost to the university. The solution is to invent some highly popular degree (e.g. Football engineering) that is a solid revenue stream.
If it's a solid engineering course, why not?
The department where I work (albeit in the US) started a 'broadcast meteorology' course a few years back which was heavily subscribed and a real money spinner for the university. It was essentially a taught class of PPL Met with 'gee whiz' pictures and touchy-feely theatre classes. The problem came after the first lot had graduated, none of them got jobs in TV/radio since they had a shallow knowledge of meteorology. Instead the jobs went to the normal meteorology graduates. Word got back to the current crop of first year students (undergrads in US don't 'declare their major' until the second year for some odd reason) and enrollment dropped to zero. We no longer have this program.
This is the real problem, and it happens in the UK also. A university gets internal approval to run a sexy sounding course - but doesn't really have the world class brains in-house to deliver it. This is arguably fraudulent behaviour, but it certainly happens in the UK. Pick a random university offering, for example, a motorsport engineering degree, and see how many staff you can find who have actually worked in the motorsports industry designing/testing/building race cars. Sadly the same is true with some aero degrees.
If you want to study ATPL theory, buy the books and do it in your spare time.
Actually JAR-FCL killed that off, you have to be registered with a formal training provider. But yes, you can do it part time for a lot cheaper than going to university.
If you want to go to university, pick a 'proper' degree with real career prospects based on your interests and skills.
Absolutely.
Don't make the mistake of a half-arsed attempt at both at the same time as there are no short cuts and it'll hurt you in the long run.
Also true, but some of these specialist courses are still pretty good and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. For example, the couple using PPL groundschool as a module have found it a pretty good imported package of general aeronautical knowledge, so if that's 1/12th of an academic year, it's not a bad approach.
G