Masters and a part time job

WibblyGirly

Has anyone here done a Masters and held down a part time job (14 hours) at the same time? Would you recommend it?
I'm hoping to do one after final year of uni but I worry about money! I know I get the loan to pay towards tuition but the rest won't cover all my living costs and my savings may not be enough. I also don't want to risk a crappy mark in my Masters though as I've heard its a big step up from undergradand whilst I work part time now, I'm not convinced I'm going to manage during my Masters.

Any advice would be greatly appeciated! :j

Alice_Walker

How many contact hours is the course? I worked part time during mine but many worked full time.

I didn't find the course a big step, but that will vary between subjects and where your skills lie. For me my Masters was less about learning facts and more about analysis, so as someone with an awful memory that worked in my favour.

WibblyGirly

Hi

I think it'll be between 6-10 hours depending which uni I go to. I'm wanting to do it in one year and it's a history related masters so I anticipate a lot of reading outside of lesson times. Did the full time workers do it in one year?

surfsister

well I'm doing a taught masters and class times are 8 a week plus online seminars/pod-casts and research days and almost all the 16 people on the course work full time and several have little children. I would say you could do it if you really want to and are prepared to put i the required graft!

it's an education related degree so classes are all day Saturday/evenings

ryuuoo

I'm doing my Master's here in London. Have to go into Uni 2/3 days a week and work the other 4 around 30 hours a week.

Doable, but still only manage to make just over £1000 a month from my job. Have really no other source of income so it is hard sometimes.

Definitely doable, hopefully worth it?

Andypandyboy

My partner did a Masters whilst working full time and we had two small children at that time as well. It can be done, you just need to be organised and disciplined.

agrinnall

It may be possible but whether it's a good idea is another matter altogether. On the Masters course I did nobody worked full time, and while quite a few people started off with part time jobs by half way through the second semester they had nearly all given them up to concentrate on the course. And one other thing to consider: all four of us who were awarded Distinctions did no paid work at all (although one was a mum to 8 and 5 year olds with a husband working offshore for 3 weeks at a time, which makes her achievement even more impressive).

Andypandyboy

agrinnall wrote: »

It may be possible but whether it's a good idea is another matter altogether. On the Masters course I did nobody worked full time, and while quite a few people started off with part time jobs by half way through the second semester they had nearly all given them up to concentrate on the course. And one other thing to consider: all four of us who were awarded Distinctions did no paid work at all (although one was a mum to 8 and 5 year olds with a husband working offshore for 3 weeks at a time, which makes her achievement even more impressive).

,

My partner also got a Distinction. You do what is needed, most people come home from work at night, play with the kids, get them ready for bed, watch a bit of TV, eat dinner and go to bed.

We just adjusted that schedule so that there was a slot for study time as needed. Weekends meant more time study allocated as and when needed. It didn't last forever, and it was worth the effort.

adom_thomas

Lets imagine a situation! You are graduated (bachelor in a discipline) and doing a full time job! Now you want to do masters and it is necessary to do get the high post! What you will do? Would you like to continue with your current job profile or want to do the masters and get the high post? Obviously, you will choose the second option! The things which you should consider is origanized and discipline!

Voyager2002

I think it depends on which Masters course... there are lots of courses at this level for people already in their career who need it for promotion, like the Education example already mentioned. However, something like History is more likely to resemble the MA that I once helped to run: there were times in the course of the year when the work-load required 50-hour weeks to cope with the demands of all the modules with deadlines at similar times. And looking at contact hours will tell you nothing, since this was all about reading and studying by yourself and meeting once a week to discuss what you were doing...

Come to that, the Masters that I did had contact times amounting to about eight hours per week for the first half of the course, and none at all while we were doing our dissertation. However, it was very much a full-time work load and I could not possibly have done justice to it while holding down any kind of job. (Perhaps the standard was high in my year: eight of us did the course, of whom five are now professors.)

agrinnall

Voyager2002 wrote: »

I think it depends on which Masters course...

Yours sounds very much like the Masters I did and described above, perhaps as you suggest some simply require less work to complete successfully than we had to do.