Intelligent Confusion

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Premature Education

Today I received a letter from the nice people at the Open University, extolling the virtues of postgraduate study. While I would really be quite interested in this, and all the study material looks completely fascinating, I can't help but ask the obvious questions.

In order to do postgraduate studies, isn't it necessary to be an actual graduate? Like, specifically, have a Bachelors Degree ? Not that my (so far not in my possession) Certificate is (will be) pretty, but it's only equivalent to 6 months full-time study, and of Level 1 papers at that - hardly what I'd call graduate level (note to non-family readers: both my sisters have Masters degrees - this isn't snobbery - if anything it's inadequacy).

Plus the fees are scary. Undergrad papers are approx £660/year (at the load I'm prepared to study at). The equivalent workload at postgrad level is ~£3500 - I suspect government funding falls off a bit.

1 Comments:

  • It's not strictly required to have a Bachelors degree but it's quite rare that someone would be admitted to study without one - you'd need to show suitable experience to be admitted directly. That said Open University is traditionally good at recognising less orthodox experience. However I think this probably is a case of some over eager person in the recruitment office sending out the letters.

    As for funding, the best place to start that I can recommend is the National Postgraduate Committee's Postgraduate Funding Guide.

    By Blogger Tim Roll-Pickering, at 8:33 pm  

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