Open University - worth it?

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hey guys,

I have a HND but would like to top up for a degree.

The OU is appealing to me as it's distance learning and seems cheaper than a traditional university.

Has anyone done a OU degree or know someone that has?

Yay or nay?

 

Depends why you want a degree, personally I think the days of IT degrees are numbered, there really is no need for a degree for most IT related jobs.

There is a need for a degree for STEM subjects, I think the part time distance learning format is probably too difficult for these subjects.

The OU tutors are great, but I think that its best used for humanities subjects where the career payback is limited, or for getting access to traditional education by completing some 'access' online courses.

Unfortunately the UK is pretty much organised around the whole mainstream education system, the reality is if you don't hit the degree by 21, graduate placement 21-23, etc. You are going to have a much harder time of it.

 

Thanks for the replies.

I know you don't need a degree to be successful in IT but I think it would be nice to achieve it.

I heard that many universities accept OU degree for their postgraduate degrees and I could do my masters part time at a reputable uni.

Another thing that attracts me to OU is that I can pay in 12 instalments compared to universities that do £9250 in 8 haha.

 

The point of a real masters is to do a PhD, if you don't plan to do a PhD then there is no point.

There are 'conversion masters' that are for mature students with some experience, they are basically a bachelors for adults.
Again you don't need these for IT, and if you were interested you could go straight for these and skip undergrad in many subjects.

If you are in IT you should be capable of teaching yourself pretty much anything you need to know. You don't need a standard university or pieces of paper, you can learn online and self study. You can also learn on the job.

Training is useful so you can apply the skills and earn money, if you are just going to hand people £10k as some navel gazing exercise, I would say don't do it.

 

Oh don't worry, I will never give these training providers thousands of pounds for a 5 day training course.

My current employer had one of these come and did a windows 10 course and it was rubbish.

I'm doing fine by self study and pass first time so far, got my CCNA next month!

I think what I need is a mentor and to network a bit more such as going to meetup.com groups.

I found a programming tutor in my area and my first lesson is soon. She worked in the games industry so I cannot wait to get started and hopefully build up my personal project portfolio.

 

I'd hold off a couple of years on this if I were you. I can see a similar model to WGU popping up over here in the next couple of years in the UK. I can also see a big re-structuring of further education & accreditation in general in the next decade or so. Employers & employees aren't seeing value from the current model.

 

I've been with the OU since 2000 and think they're great. Excellent value for money (especially as I got my employer to cough up for my last course).
The main downside is other people. One of the reasons I went with the OU is that I don't want to have to go to lectures or tutorials etc. I even try to avoid modules that have exams. However, for reasons best known to themselves, the OU keeps trying to throw in 'icebreaker' activities and group assignments. Problem with that is commitment from others is often poor and I got really frustrated when a TMA question relied upon input from others which left me unable to complete it until the last minute.
Also, due to poor planning on my part I didn't stack my modules up to form a degree, just did whatever I was interested in. Due to the changing nature of IT, they then discontinue various modules and ulimately stop your points from those modules adding up to anything. As a result I've got a massive bank of points that I can't do anything with.
It is tough, mind. People think that because it's part time and you study from home that it's easy. It isn't. Deadlines are harsh and all the courses I did ended up with about 60% wastage from people falling behind and dropping out.

Oh, and hello everybody...

 

Totally agree with JonnyMX, good quality tuition at a low price, but its overly onerous in terms of paperwork, exams, tutorials and point allocation. This means basically you can end up having to do 2 degrees worth of work to get one degree. A 2 year part time conversion masters will make more sense to most people, an they can also be had fairly cheap.

 

They still have them. One of my IT tutors had a beard. Not sure about the chalk board, nor what he was up to at 3am...

 

I used to watch those OU programs at 5 am when I was 7 years old and woke up early and my parents were still in bed.

Managed to learn some Maths and Engineering.

That was when you could actually learn something from TV, instead of it being mindless propaganda and reality TV.

The OU moved to a DVD approach when I was doing it, I really think they should be part government sponsored and the content should be freely available, not pay to play.

The programs we now get that are joint 'BBC and OU documentaries' are completely vapid and vacuous.

The BBC really should lose its license fee if they aren't prepared to make true educational content. Its basically a propaganda tax now.

More sensible programs on RT and YouTube than BBC.

 

I should of done an apprenticeship when I left school but now I don't think I will be eligible?

 

Depends what you want to get into.. if its programming I’d say yes.. if its more support work or networking etc etc dont bother.

EDIT: just to add to this, as I didnt have time earlier...
My opinion is of all IT degrees not just OU/Online degrees. I think if someone wanted to be a network engineer they are best investing their time in IT certs rather than a degree and just learning from places such as Udemy, Pluralsight etc (its where I got most of my knowledge), partly because no one is going to let you loose on a live network simply because you have a degree, and more than likely you will start in helpdesk/desktop support role which you certainly dont need a degree for. Now if you wanted to be a programmer Id say get a degree as I think it would be a lot harder getting into the field without a related degree based on what I see when browsing job sites. @dmarsh correct me if Im wrong.

 

Computer Science degree for programmer, useful yes, essential no.