open university and degrees

[dieselboy]

i looked at doing a physics degree on OU, but it doesn't really make it clear exactly how much it's gonna cost, or how long it will take!... there seem to be infinite combinations of ways to do the degree!!

if you look on the specific page for that degree, it tells you what individual courses you need to take with the price for each course.
a computer degree i looked at yesterday after i added up all the individual fees came to £4250
spread that over 4 years and its little over a grand each year not including pens, pencils paper or new jumper once the "bigger boys" have flushed you down t' loo.

[Scorpion]

No, I don't have a degree and yes degrees are important, although it depends on what type of job your looking for after all.

I'm old(ish) and I've worked in engineering for many, many, years. In that time I've worked with some people who left school with no form of educational certificates but they had a gift with machinery. They wouldn't stand a cat in hells chance of getting the same job now, but their insight and knowledge was, and still is, invaluable.

I've also worked with engineers, who had degrees, who were hopeless when it came down to working on machines or communicating what they required. I've had engineers ask me to 'drill half a hole on the end of another one' (slot) and ask me to replace 'the spiky wheel thing that chains run on' (sprocket). No doubt a lot of you have had the same experiences.

I would love to study for a degree, I think it's a fantastic achievement, but at 54 it would only be for my personal satisfaction. It wouldn't get me any further up the promotion ladder at work. I've taken many courses to get where I am now (and stay there), electrical, hydraulic, 20 keys, risk assessment, NVQ's, business improvement techniques etc.

There are also a lot of people out there who have degrees and are out of work! If you need a degree to gain the job you desire, then you have little option but to go for it.

Good luck, I'm sure all the hard work will be worth it in the end!

Sorry for the long winded reply, I got carried away there for a moment!

[Albannach]

so as long as the OU is what i think it is (working at your own pace) then i can do certain things when i can.

It isn't and you can't. They have very strict deadlines for their assignments. I'd be surprised if you can do an OU degree in 4 years. I was at mine for 7 and already had some points because of the job I do and my prior qualifications.

[Rustinho]

oh, and the money's only good if you get promoted to team leader, department head, etc. etc.

Starting salary for me as a secondary school science teacher will be approximately £5-6k a year more than I was on as a senior scientist in an R&D lab at a pharmaceutical company. That's before all the golden hellos, etc, too. In the grand scheme of things I'll never get rich as a teacher but it's a helluva lot better than working in a chemistry lab in industry!

There is such a lack of (particularly physics) science teachers that rapid promotion to department head, etc, is a distinct probability if thats what I want to go for too.

The working hours are about what I was doing "in the real world" as well so I reckon there aren't many negatives compared to what I was doing before apart from the fact that holiday times are set in stone (which to be fair they would be anyway with me being a dad now).

It's win win all the way...

[Dodge]

I don't have one, my wife has two.

I'm a truck driver and she's a HR Manager and earns twice what I do.

Although I'm not daft, I just wasn't given the encouragement as a kid, poor school etc, I could have gone on to college and achieved more academically, I just don't "do" people and I certainly couldn't work in HR.