Gambling on a year out to study

[GillsMan]

I find it very difficult to study and work as I'm tired when I get home, pursue my other interests, watch footie and generally enjoy getting drunk on weekends. This would mean it would take a few years to complete the qualifications rather than get done in a year. That means income lost as take longer to get the qualifications needed for the jobs with more pay.

Hearing about how graduates will soon be leaving uni with £32k+ debt for a bachelors degree... it seems my £20k investment would be cheap in comparison.

I'm not trying to set myself up as some kind of superman here, but I do most of that as well. I watch football (albeit not as much as last season) - my local club live, Goals on Sunday, zone in and out of Goals Gillette Soccer Saturday, etc, usually attend some sort of birthday party at the weekends, one or two nights a week out with old work colleagues (admittedly that's not every week, maybe two weeks in a month will be like that), etc.

You're right about degrees taking longer, although I am way ahead of where I'm supposed to be (course started 2 October (although I got materials earlier), first TMA due end of November, second due end of January - I've done first two already). It's self-paced so if you're a fast learner it's great. If you're not then maybe it's not such a great idea.

As I said, I'm also fitting in more industry qualifications. I should state that my IT skills are soft skills, so the IT qualifications I'm working towards are MOS, MCAS, MCP, TAP, etc, and my degree is Computing and Business, so I expect it's a lot tougher for people doing real qualifications that are actually properly techie, but the point is, you can fit a lot into the day, maintain a social and family life and all of the above if you put your mind to it.

Depends how determined you are really.

[Wanderer]

The third option is to take neither and embark on studying for 12-15 months to finish off qualifications that I've pursued for a while (sorry won't reveal details here) which would improve my reasonable expectations of permie salary + contractor rate to £55-£70k permie or £550- £800/day contractor, or at the very least would help me thrash any competition for a £400/day contract hopefully more locally.

I would say do it now while the market is down a bit. Why wait until the next boom time to take a year off? You would have to consider carefully how a year out studying would impact your career and CV. Would the qualification make up for the gap in your CV? How big is the gap going to be compared to your number of years work experience?

You sound pretty confident of your prospects though, so ahead and do what you want now before marriage/kids or whatever happens.

[BlasterBates]

20K investment that's a lot of money and when you add lost earnings would be around 100 grand.

Part-time courses for example an MBA are much much cheaper, and of course as a contractor you don't necessarily have to work 40 hours a week, say reserve 4-5 hours for your studies, and after two years you'll have enough knowledge. You don't need to study at the weekend, I would say put aside 2 or 3 nights a week where you do 2 -3 hours 8-11 pm lolling in front of a television "half-listening" and then a few hours on a Sunday morning/afternoon after the hangover has subsided.

Then you may spend an hour on the train commuting so that would be 5 hours a week.

...and of course if you're doing assignments, that just requires thinking about the problem and what you're going to write, that's just thinking in a few spare moments at work, while your walking to the coffee machine. Then when you get home just write the assignment up.

You'd be amazed how much free time your brain has in a day to learn, the books don't need to be in front of you, just need to be thinking about it.

[Spacecadet]

Agree with BlasterBates here... a part time course will only need a few weeks of full time commitment per year and you can spend a few evenings each week studying.