REVEALED: The TRUE Cost of Dissertation Printing

After a year of grafting solidly on one mammoth piece of work, your dissertation is quite rightly the pinnacle of your university career. But how much is it going to set you back? The Tab sets out to highlight the massive disparity between students’ dissertation costs.

A dissertation, third year project or individual project as some schools call theirs, is typically 10,000 words long and can be between 40 and 120 pages long depending on graphs, tables and appendices. Obviously an English Literature dissertation will be light on graphs, and a music dissertation devoid of pictures, but how do the costs compare?

For any programme below PhD, there is not a University requirement in place about the costs of printing. This means that each faculty is free to set their own requirements in terms of binding, layout, colours and number of copies. This can mean the prices for dissertations can vary wildly across the University.

Below is a selection of the dissertation costs from various academic units. Report lengths are rough averages and there will be variations even within academic units and disciplines. These figures are based on the University of Southampton printing costs and on individual testimonies. Getting your work printed elsewhere may well be cheaper: let us know in the comments.

Academic Unit: ECS
Length: ~60 pages
Number of copies: Online only
Binding cost: N/A
Colour: Y
Total: Zero

Academic Unit: English
Length: ~30 pages
Number of copies: 2
Binding cost: £1.50 cheapest, £7 bound
Colour: N
Total: £3 to £14

Academic Unit: Law
Length: ~40 pages
Number of copies: 2
Binding cost: £12
Colour: N
Total: £16

Academic Unit: Engineering
Length: ~100 pages
Number of copies: 2
Binding cost: £12
Colour: Y
Total: £62

Academic Unit: Management
Length: ~80 pages
Number of copies: 2
Binding cost: £12
Colour: Y
Total: £52

Academic Unit: Maths
Length: ~30 pages
Number of copies: 2
Binding cost: None
Colour: N
Total: £3

Academic Unit: History
Length: ~40 pages
Number of copies: 1
Binding cost: Soft binding
Colour: N
Total: £14

Academic Unit: Chemistry
Length: ~80
Number of copies: 2
Binding cost: Free
Colour: Y
Total: £45

This wide range of costs is particularly shocking.

SUSU Vice President Academic Affairs, Sasha Watson, had this to say:

Dissertation costs are a very serious issue, as there is such a range of experiences depending on where you study in the University. This is made more important because of the development of online submission, which makes the idea of bound dissertations obsolete, as has been seen in History and ECS, to name a few areas, and needs to be addressed.

The University knows this, and as a result, are already looking at reviewing how dissertations (including PhD students) are submitted, gathering information on current processes, and working out what options are available moving forward – with a strong understanding that online submission is much better and easier for the student. This work will be completed within the next year, along with many other reviews about University practice, and will hopefully lead to a positive outcome.

Dr Karen Piggott, from the University’s Quality, Standards and Accreditation Team, told The Tab:

The University … doesn’t want students paying more than they should. The University through University Programme Committee, will be looking at this issue in the coming academic year.

Are dissertation printing costs fair? How much did yours cost? Let us know in the comments.