Study + Work FT possible

AzimScot

Hi,

I am considering this next year to enhance my job prospects. As I hear from friends that full time uni/college courses are 10-15 hours per week and most of the classes are voluntary as you are mature enough to know how much support you require. I can't afford to live full time work 35 hours per week on about £8 per hour. Also, the misses is working and no kids.

Anyone went down this road?

dmg24

Whilst attendance hours may be under fifteen, most degrees will require nearly the same amount again in independent study. Also, the classes are not voluntary. Poor attendance could get you thrown off the course.

Have you considered OU or other distance learning courses?

Oldernotwiser

As your wife is working and you have no children, you may well find that you can manage financially on her earnings, your student finance and any part time income you may get.

If you really need a full time job to manage, I'd second the suggestion of part time study with somewhere like the OU.

jessicamb

I work full time and study with OU - depending on what course you do some universities offer part time courses running in the evening. Either would fit in with working full time. If you wanted to work full time and study full time I think it could be done with the right shifts at work but you would be giving up your life for a set period of time - you wouldnt have time to do anything more than go to work, study and sleep. The part time route might be longer but probably better for your sanity.

DVardysShadow

dmg24 wrote: »

Whilst attendance hours may be under fifteen, most degrees will require nearly the same amount again in independent study. Also, the classes are not voluntary. Poor attendance could get you thrown off the course.

Have you considered OU or other distance learning courses?

From personal experience and keeping a log, 20 week modules with 2 hours a week of contact time would result in about 36 hours contact time taking exams into account and would require about 180 hours work on my own. So the ratio is about 5 to 1 for a near top grading, less if your ambitions were lower, less in the earlier years, more later.

Whether classes are voluntary depends on the institution - without exception, if you turn in good work, they should not be on your case, certainly after the first year.

Wine_of_the_World

I worked full time whilst at uni - but only for a Christmas temp job. It was an afternoon / evening shift so I didn't miss out on any lectures. It was only for three weeks of actual uni time, and in my first year. I really don't think it would be sustainable through the whole year as I had little time to do reading / course work.

However you have long holidays through the summer where its easy to quickly build up some money and working part time the rest of the year is defiantly possible - I did

wontfallforit

AzimScot wrote: »

Hi,

I am considering this next year to enhance my job prospects. As I hear from friends that full time uni/college courses are 10-15 hours per week and most of the classes are voluntary as you are mature enough to know how much support you require. I can't afford to live full time work 35 hours per week on about £8 per hour. Also, the misses is working and no kids.

Anyone went down this road?

It is do-able, but the biggie is the exact timing of your face-to-face classes. They're not optional if you take up some kind of student funding, such as a fee loan (fees are over £3,000 per year, full time). Poor attendance can see your funding reduced or withdrawn - I've seen it happen with my own eyes.

Also, if you don't intend to attend many of your classes, then you might as well enrol in a distance learning course. The OU is the obvious option, but many 'physical' universities now also offer some DL degrees. That way, you needn't worry about poor attendance, etc. Full-time traditional degrees in 'real' universities really aren't designed for full-time workers. They deliver lectures, seminars and workshops for a reason - they contain valuable course information. It's quite difficult and incredibly boring to study for a degree just by looking at the reading list. The classes are there for you to take advantage of, ask questions, etc.

However, the distance learning option is likely to be part-time rather than full-time, but given that you plan to hold a full time job, you're much more likely to achieve a better result from your study if you learn part time, especially if you have no experience of higher education.

If you enrol on a full-time university course and you don't attend, or your attendance is very poor, you may struggle to get help and advice from your lecturers when you need it. Being experts in their field, they're there to answer your questions, point you in the right direction, etc., but they tend to work on a priority basis - the people who attend are dealt with first. Again, this is something I've come across - lecturers outright refusing to provide additional support for people who's attendance is very low for no good reason. They're unlikely to be sympathetic if your reason for poor attendance is your job.

Another thing - the workload will be fairly intense. Expect to study anywhere between 5 and 10 different modules per academic year - each of which will have its own coursework (often 2 essays / 1 essay, 1 report / 1 essay, 1 exam, etc.). Could you really work 35 hours per week and write at least one piece of uni work per week also? bearing in mind that essays in your first year are usually somewhere in the region of 1,500+ words, for which you'd be expected to read and reference a bare minimum of 5-10 different sources (+ more for 2nd and 3rd year work).

I worked about 30 hours per week when I did my MA. My classes were only 3 hours long, 2 evenings a week, but it ate up most of my life, and at one point I ended up quite ill. Almost every spare minute I had was spent researching, reading, writing and revising. Masters are supposed to be more taxing than Bachelors, but Bachelors tend to have more study hours, and your course content in the first year can be quite diverse (and, depending on the exact course/uni, you will have fairly limited choice about exactly which modules you study in your 1st year).

So, speaking from experience, I'd think long and hard before I undertook FT work AND study. FT work and PT study is hard enough, but doing both FT throws up so many other problems (such as attendance issues).

There are only so many hours in the day...Good luck

dmg24

DVardysShadow wrote: »

From personal experience and keeping a log, 20 week modules with 2 hours a week of contact time would result in about 36 hours contact time taking exams into account and would require about 180 hours work on my own. So the ratio is about 5 to 1 for a near top grading, less if your ambitions were lower, less in the earlier years, more later.

Whether classes are voluntary depends on the institution - without exception, if you turn in good work, they should not be on your case, certainly after the first year.

Your first paragraph does not make sense, and your second paragraph is incorrect.

DVardysShadow

dmg24 wrote: »

Your first paragraph does not make sense,

Your problem

and your second paragraph is incorrect.

wontfallforit points out that if you are taking funding, then this may be cut. I will accept this. But as far as the learning institution is concerned, if you do not attend fully, they have no problem, as long as the work is being put in. I have seen this.

ali-t

When I studied at undergraduate and post grad level I worked 20hpw and now I work full time and am studying towards an MSc. If you want to do it, it can be done but you have to be prepared to give up your social life, free time, quality time with your partner etc etc. It is very time intensive but I have always seen it as a short term commitment for much longer gains.

wontfallforit

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Your problem


wontfallforit points out that if you are taking funding, then this may be cut. I will accept this. But as far as the learning institution is concerned, if you do not attend fully, they have no problem, as long as the work is being put in. I have seen this.

Quite right, in my experience, the worst that happens if you're not taking any funding is that the lecturers can be very standoffish, and even refuse to help. If you're naturally very bright and/or experienced in your chosen field of study, this isn't a major issue.

It's a pain for those inexperienced and/or entering HE for the first time.

During my MA, all the lecturers flatly refused to answer emails, questions, etc. for those who were seen to be very poor attenders (or those who turned up to the lectures for the notes, and then promptly left!).

No-one was removed from the course though, because we were all paying for it (some overseas students forked out 10k, and nobody at all had access to funding, being postgrads). They're certainly not as 'moral' when it comes to taking your fees

However, the OP mentioned in another post that his wife is not only earning less than £100pw, but is also on a spouse visa. In that case, he'd probably have to take a fee loan at the very least, given that he is supposed to be supporting her. If he gave up work completely, his wife's Indefinite Leave To Remain could be at risk, when her spouse visa expires. Unless she miraculously lands a top job (on a 2 year visa!), they'd be unable to prove that they're financially independent (though I believe that it's OK to take a student loan, as long as it isn't your only form of income).