Financial & Travel Musings

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In days gone by, universities offered nice simple “packaged degrees”. Oh, sure you could vary the optional courses within one of their packages but, by and large, they stuck to the tried and trusted combinations such as BSc in physics, BA in English and whatnot.

These days though, flexibility is the name of the game and perhaps the ultimate in that game is the Open University. In addition to their general degree, they offer what’s quite a bewildering range of named degrees.

For example (and this is a simple example), in my own case I am on my (hopefuly) final course for a BA Hons Modern Languages in French and Spanish. Except that it’s not so simple because right now I could claim a BA degree and (all being well) I will also have the choice of a BA Hons degree as an alternative to the Modern Languages named one.

Had I changed one course I could have had a BA Hons European Studies or the modern languages in French & English or Spanish & English. Change two courses and you can add combinations such as BA Hons Humanities, BA French & Law, and many others.

What adds even more complexity is that the OU degrees are normally taken part-time so that they can span anything up to 12 years which is obviously quite a lot of time in which to change your original plans and many people do that of course (me included: I never dreamt that one day I’d be talking about finishing a modern languages degree).

Whilst this flexibility is, on the whole, a “good thing”, you do need to keep an eye on what you’re doing to avoid ending up with a rag-bag collection of subjects within your degree. If you’re planning on doing something with it some kind of focus is essential to avoid confusing potential employers. That’s not to say that you can’t throw in the oddball course that you always wanted to do (mine may be their Creative Writing course) but it’s best avoiding the temptation to do a lot of unrelated courses.

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When you initially start on a study programme, it’s usually easy enough to “choose” a course in that the early courses you do are usually compulsory for whatever study programme you’re following.

Sometimes it’s easy enough to choose the next one as you’ll choose the course options that originally attracted you to the study programme. For example, you’re going to need to do Spanish if your original reason for following a languages degree programme was to be able to speak Spanish.

However, eventually most people run off the end of the obvious choices for them and then find that they’re innundated with advice and “obvious” choices that they should take. For example, most language degrees will require you to also take English. When you follow a series of foreign language programmes with one in English, you’ll probably find it fairly simple and your marks will probably reflect that. When you’ve high marks in a subject, everyone will suggest that you continue with it, but that doesn’t mean that you should. If you’re only doing that subject to fulfill a course requirement then you need to consider whether or not you even like that subject irrespective of whatever marks you might be getting in it.

At degree level, you need to concentrate on subjects that you enjoy, not what other people think you should be doing. Running with subjects that you don’t enjoy is a recipe for disaster at this level. Sure, you’ll have to do some compulsory subjects that you’re not necessarily enthusiasic about but you definitely don’t want to add optional subjects that you don’t like.

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