Open University

Yes, my MA in Music was with them, and it was a great experience for me, particularly as I wanted to do it with as little help as possible, and it was very cheap back then (2004-2006 - about £3000 total for the three years). I had two good tutors, and it was well structured. It led me up avenues I didn't think it would, and actually discovered I really liked writing essays.

I'm sure there was more support available if one wanted it, but I didn't. Even back then, it was nearly all by email, with just one in-person seminar, and one written exam (both in the first year).

To put the IT into perspective, I was using a PC with a total of 1.2Gb of memory, and I was still on dial-up internet in the first couple of years. But it still worked.

Don't do a PhD for either the money or the status, because it never pays for itself and no one cares.

It is sometimes helpful when complaining about customer service.

By mental fallout, do you mean crushing disappointment?

He specifically struggled with only seeing everything through a lens of problems, a sort of destructive perfectionism, and had his whole identity caught up in it which didn't help matters, and that was before he felt he had his life on hold whilst his friends (like me) where getting on in life.

But I would encourage anyone to do an extra degree for shits and giggles.

For some reason I have a mental image of someone at a check in desk wearing a gown and mortar board, demanding to know why they've been bumped from a flight.

No.

Only joking. It is a door opener in some fields, including mine.

What sort of work, if you don't mind me asking?

My plan is to apply to do a PhD in my retirement. My Uncle took early retirement at 50 with a massive Civil Service Pension (jammy %#*). He did his PhD and then got asked to present various papers on it at some pretty nice, all expenses paid, international conferences. I don't expect that myself, would just be nice to be Dr Grimpeur! 😂

After doing a degree and a professional accountancy qualification the last thing I wanted was more bloody exams.

I did have a quick look at the OU course I might have wanted to do if time were no object, but the were in reality not feasible until I retire. I get the impression that in most lines of work, getting qualifications at this level makes you better qualified but not better paid.

I have done half the requirement for an OU degree, back around 2010 time. I started it with the intention of getting a history degree but it was like yourself Pross, just because it was a subject that interested me. That was partly why I didn't finish it, not doing it for a career obviously puts a different slant on motivation but the main reason was the exams at the end. It turns out I really hated sitting down as an adult and doing three hour exams, it was like a horrible flashback to school and I wondered why on earth I was paying to do it to myself in my spare time.

Also it was around Mr Osborne's austerity drive so the funding changed, initially each module was something like £700 but the government subsidy was pulled and it nearly tripled. I have no idea what it is now but at the time I considered that as I was only doing it for fun the costs it required didn't represent value for money, a four figure sum buys an awful lot of books if you are just interested in that subject and don't require the qualification.

I would however say don't let my experience put you off because there were positives, I enjoyed the essay assignments and meeting different folk at the tutorials and you can commit to only one module at a time if you like, you are not automatically signing up for the full term degree, so just try a single module and see how you get on.

Trust me, my exams were worse. At least in terms of the number (14) and pass rates.

Yep. I've watched educating Rita and personally I reckon Caine was right, staying a bit thick in life is the way to go.

I've had a look at it to do whatever they call the equivalent of the first year of a chemistry degree to fill in some of the gaps I come across in geochemistry.

There are options to do that so you can try it out for a year or two before committing to the whole thing. You can build on it from there if you then decide to carry on into second year etc.

In third year you have to start thinking about dissertations and stuff which I can imagine gets a little more difficult (the obvious thing here would be doing it on something you are working on but I guess not everyone can do that in any case...)

Probably does but we were talking about PhDs and academic qualifications above. I did my chartered accountancy exams for a reason, but after finishing them saw no benefit in going further and can't complain about the end results.