They are big and wordy. They are expensive. But are they any good??? We have recently undertaken a professional review of all of the CIPS Study Guides to offer our learners the best advice as to how to use these book “beasts”. Read more here, or look through the Cordie YouTube channel for each of our reviews.
THE GOOD…
In general the CIPS study guides offer 98-99% syllabus coverage. That means there is always some text available to read up on any aspect of your study module and to help you revise.
All of them are structured well. They have separate chapters for each study module Learning Outcome, and they sequentially follow the structure of the syllabus in exactly the same order. This means you can easily look up learning content and/or cross-reference study material.
The layout is consistent and professionally designed. It can look a little wordy at times, but there are nice box-outs and diagrams that help break-up the otherwise tedious read.
On the whole, they are easy to read and technical content is fairly easily explained.
THE BAD…
They are too wordy and too often they go “off-message”. The authors are outsourced freelancers who are not part of the CIPS exam team (some are not even members of CIPS) and it is obvious they do not fully understand CIPS policies towards learning and assessment.
Added to this, there is too much superfluous and irrelevant text. A study guide should focus on the required content of the qualification, and therefore by default the technical content that will be examined. Unfortunately, almost every single study guide contains unnecessary content that will never be examined because it is not part of the official syllabus.
This creates a problem for learners. They do not know whether to risk omitting this extra material from their studies, or to waste excessive time learning stuff that will never be in their exam.
And on that note, none of the study guides offers any advice guidance or support on the CIPS exam itself. It begs the question as to the purpose of each study guide. Each one is silent about the exam and none of them contains representative assessment material that will help learners get ready for their exam.
Lastly, the CIPS study guides still contain an excessive leaning towards the UK, with far too many UK examples, UK statutory legislation and UK government policies. Everyone knows that CIPS is keen to stress the international relevance of the profession and its qualifications, but unfortunately this has not translated to the authors of the study guides.
…AND THE UGLY!
Oh dear… some of the content is wrong. We have to say this is incredibly frustrating and unprofessional of CIPS, especially when their mission is to support the profession. For example:
Financial information is incorrectly presented in several of the CIPS study guides
References to some UK and EU legislation is outdated
Several academic models are presented inconsistently.
This is incredibly frustrating for professional study centres like ourselves and our teaching staff. It looks bad when we have to inform students that their study guide is incorrect. We do not wish to undermine the good work of the Institute, but we cannot allow incorrect information to be disseminated. It only confuses the student population.
Added to this, the price of the study guides seems to becoming increasingly untenable. The current set of guides were first published in 2019 and since then the price has increased by +80%.
The ‘usual’ pricing model for books is a gradual reduction in price after the first year or two of publication. A quick skim through any online book retailer will verify this - and this matches the “marginal cost” approach to book production. However, CIPS has been increasing the prices of its study guides year after year and seems to be quite happy to continue to leverage its student membership base.
SO, HOW SHOULD I USE THE CIPS STUDY GUIDES?
Despite the critical reviews above, Cordie still recommends that all of our CIPS learners obtain access to their relevant CIPS study guide as part of their exam preparation. It is a useful learning aid, but none of them should be fully relied on. your CIPS tutor will be able to guide you through the content.
We strongly recommend a “dip-in, dip-out” approach to studying with one of the CIPS study guides. They are useful but more so as a reference or “look-up” tool. We do not recommend they are read cover-to-cover!
FIND OUT MORE:
The Cordie directors have over 20 years’ experience working closely with CIPS in the fields of teaching, assessment and educational support. They have helped CIPS prepare and review syllabuses, they have written countless exam papers and they have supervised exam teams for many years.
Why not look at some of the reviews we give the Level 4 CIPS study guides? See what score we give each one - and please remember to ‘like’ and ‘subscribe’ to the Cordie YouTube channel for more free study material:
Please do get in touch to find out more about how to study for your CIPS exams, either with or without one of the expensive CIPS study guides. We provide extensive (free) learning resources for all of our Level 4 CIPS learners. Some even say they do not need a CIPS study guide!
We look forward to hearing from you.