on life long learning
04.23.10
For various reasons I am looking at going back to college next autumn. In fact, the whole college thing has been under consideration for three or four months but the bastardisation of semesterisation in Irish colleges means that on average, intake is in autumn and that is it. This is in contrast to Germany where you can start in spring because you can make up the credits up in any order – to some extent.
So the whole investigation was shelved pending further information on some fronts. I have some prior qualifications. I have a degree in languages -French and German, postgraduate diplomas in conference interpreting and information technology. I did look at doing a continuation masters for the IT stuff but I can’t see that it’s still available.
In part, I’m stuck between a couple of principles. Firstly, I think that you should – as far as practical – study stuff you’re interested in. But I’m in my mid thirties and even now still have an eye on career implications and so this doesn’t leave me much scope for taking 4 years off to go back and study mediaeval history, for example.
With that in mind, I have started looking at options in the local universities and will also examine some options in the distance sector. As far as Ireland is concerned, that is National Distance Learning at DCU which is clinically insane since I live down the road from DCU, or the Open University which is expensive.
My interests are a bit varied. I’ve been looking at options in mathematics, multimedia, graphics design and maybe more information technology since what I do is hyperspecialised and will definitely not be around for the rest of my life. Some adjustment is called for.
For practical reasons, I’m interested in part time options. Ireland isn’t good at this. Much of Ireland’s college scheduling has a single market in mind and that’s school leavers. But browsing part time courses is hit or miss.
DCU, for example, if you’re looking at their postgraduate qualification lists them all on a single page and shows whether they are full or part time or both. This is useful. DIT allows you to browse on either part time or full time. This is useful too although I prefer the DCU option of listening everything. So far, on UCD’s page and Trinity’s page, I have had some difficulty identifying what courses are full and what courses are part time. This is particularly difficult because having looked at the maths stuff, UCD appears to have the nicer courses but they are all full time.
In truth, I rather think we need to look at how we approach education in this country. In some respects, it is overly regimented, and it’s quite reactionary. I live near DCU and I work quite near there at the moment too. In an ideal world, their timetabling structure would enable me to pick up some of their daytime degree courses on a part time basis by agreement with my employer for example – certainly to complete them over a slightly longer time frame or shorter as required.
Most of the universities and colleges in Ireland now have a credits based system. While I recognise that it’s hardly economically beneficial to have school leavers (particularly if they are government grant aided in any shape or form) languishing around the system if they cannot acquire a sufficient number of credits in a given time space, it might be long term beneficial to make it possible to acquire the benefits on an ad hoc basis if you are otherwise working.
I have no doubt that the colleges – already facing cuts and reconsideration – would scream at the cost of implementing such a system. On the other hand, for a country that’s desperately looking at ways of spinning out of an economic crisis, some fresh thinking is going to be needed and some hard thinking.
Of course, if it happens, it won’t happen in time for me. But in the future, if we can do a better job of selling education and making it possible to buy education particularly for people in full time employment – not, for example, rely on the Open University to fill gaps – it might go a long way towards contributing to ongoing economic development.