How to get a degree whilst working!

weemarie

Hi, I have been thinking about studying for a degree for years but don't know how to go about it.
I have a relatively good job in Business but would consider a whole career change. I feel like a business type degree would help me progress in my current position but would love to change and go into something perhaps around social work/caring type profession. So would consider both options.

My question is are there any online degrees (even level 7) that I could do whilst working? Which courses are the fastest? Can you do lots of different short courses for credits to get a degree? I have to work full time and I have young children.

I only have my leaving certificate.

Thanks so much, would really appreciate some help!

intheclouds

I just finished a degree and then a masters while working and now Im doing another degree. All by distance learning. None of it is work related (I already have an original degree and post grad in my work area), I just study things that I find interesting. No harm on my CV however!

There is a huge variety of stuff out there!

Its important to make sure you are studying for a proper accredited degree with a recognised university.

Its also important to check out the overall cost and how it can be broken down, minimum time in which the course can be undertaken and whether or not you are expected to do any on-campus study during the course.

Unfortunately a lot of funding has been pulled from UK universities so they have had to stop subsidising many of their distance programs meaning that courses that used to be accessible no longer are. For example, Open University is beyond the reach of many now with it costing around 15k to do a degree if you are an Irish student (it used to be about 5k). The university I am currently studying with have increased their module prices from 525 pounds per module to 1000 pounds per module for new students.

So you need to do quite a bit of investigation.

There is no central repository of information either so you have to basically google courses that you might be interested in (example "philosophy distance learning UK") and then check out the offerings, a lot of the time when you find a course in one university they also have other distance learning offerings so you can check out their full list.

So far I have studied with University of London (very very little contact/supervision and examined by yearly exams in May each year), University of Wales Trinity St David (a lot more contact/supervision, examined by continuous assessment and a dissertation), Liverpool John Moores University (most amount of contact, examined by continuous assessment and online multiple choice exams) and the University of Central Lancashire (a decent amount of contact and examined by continuous assessment).

These days most of the distance learning courses have Moodle or Blackboard which are learning platforms and there are forums to chat to other students or contact the supervisors.

Feel free to ask me anything about my experiences.

ronano

There's courses like this as an evening degree in social care http://www.itcarlow.ie/study/lifelong-learning/parttime-courses-carlow/social-sciences-part-time-carlow.htm

I know they also run a post grad evening 1 year course in social care if you already hold a level 8 degree of any sort. That option may give you more flexibility to do an open university degree etc.

Both of courses above require 800 practice hours.

Good luck

Gaz

I did my degree in computing part-time, 3 evenings a week in DIT. Took me just shy of 5 years. Such a great feeling to finally graduate.

I found the first 3 years easy enough however my final year and project/thesis was fairly tough and time consuming, you really need an accommodating partner when young kids are involved.

Best of luck.

weemarie

Thank you, congrats.