With UK tuition fees rising at some universities to a staggering GBP 9,000 many people are deciding that having a degree is not necessarily a good thing – particularly in view of huge student loans taking many years to be paid back. With bursaries being practically non-existent for Master’s Degree courses or PhDs, the future for education for continuing personal development via university degrees looks rather bleak.
Indeed, with high unemployment rates among graduates it begs the question, if they did not waste their money on useless degrees.
Did you fall for the Glossy Prospectus?
Mature students are greeted with glossy pictures promising a rekindling of their youth at a university campus near you, but the reality is far from the truth. If you opt for lifelong learning provided through the university system, you’ll often find that courses which are advertised as being at Level 1 of a BA university degree are nothing more than a dumbed-down version of the real thing. What did you expect – you are over thirty and your brain cells are deemed to be practically dead!
There are the types of university courses that particularly attract mature students want to dip a toe into continuing personal development courses such as mediation or creative writing and they find that lecturers cannot even be bothered to provide adequate tuition – but merely print out material over the internet which they hand out and then show a video. Why did you bother to pay a fee for that, you might ask yourself?
Being geared mostly towards young graduates, universities do not seem to offer much to mature students beyond a few entertaining free public lectures and the odd language class enabling us to go confidently into a shop in Spain during our holiday.
Continuing Personal Development of a Different Kind
Many charities and voluntary organizations offer continuing personal development courses as part of their training for volunteers. In seminars or workshops volunteers learn about complex issues either dealing with children, older people or animals. The larger organizations run accredited courses and these will lead to qualifications which can change your life. Meanwhile, you’ll make new friends among the wonderful charity people and you are giving something back to your community.
If you’ve thought about nursing but didn’t know how to get into it, you may be able to pursue a career as a nursing assistant, which is the entry level. Community colleges offer courses for trainee nurses and courses can take as little as 6 weeks, but more typically will last for six months. Many hospitals and nursing homes or care homes will have in-house training programmes that will lead to nursing qualifications. Candidates work and study at the same time. The candidates will have to sign a contract which will require them to work for the care home or nursing home for a specified time in exchange for their free tuition. This is a good arrangement, as it provides the trainee nurse with the first work experience, making her/him more employable after gaining qualifications.