Did anyone else’s university get their degree wrong?

I graduated from University of Birmingham, where I studied my postgraduate law degree, a few years ago.

For context, at UoB you can study LLM General Law or you can specialise in LLM Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, International Commercial Law etc. No matter what you pick, everyone starts out doing LLM General Law. In September, we picked all the modules we wanted to do, and later in the year we got an email asking us to submit our choice for a more specialised degree, as long as we had picked the correct modules. E.g. if you wanted to study Criminal Law, you had to ensure you had picked all the Criminal Law modules.

At the start of the year I picked exclusively Criminal Law related modules and when we were emailed, I submitted the form to say I wanted my degree to be LLM Criminal Law and Criminal Justice, not just LLM General Law. I submitted the form with my boyfriend as witness and I thought nothing of it.

My dissertation came and went. When submitting my dissertation, I was asked to put the name of my course on the first page, and I put down LLM Criminal Law and Criminal Justice. This was checked by many people and everything was good.

The day of graduation came, and when my name and course were read out I was displeased to hear they called out “General Law”. When I collected my certificate, sure enough that’s all it said.

Several months of emailing back and forth with the uni ensued. They claimed I had never submitted the form and they took that to mean I wanted my degree to state General Law. I pointed out how I had exclusively taken criminal law related modules, the name of the fucking course was on my dissertation AND I remembered filling out the form and submitting it. I didn’t get any email confirmation, so maybe it was my fault for not chasing it when it happened, but I was just shocked at the incompetence the university was showing.

In the end, I gave up and accepted my stupid LLM General Law degree. This hasn’t had any effect on my life but I’m really disappointed that my passion for criminal law isn’t reflected on my degree certificate.

I don’t need any advice or anything. I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this.