Choosing a postgraduate program to suit you

Working out what you want

Degrees for different purposes

Other things to consider

Working out what you want

There are some 7000 postgraduate programs available across the country. While it sounds like a needle-in-a-haystack story, there are ways to ensure that you choose the right one for you. To begin with, it is a good idea to ask yourself a few questions and develop a plan of attack.

First things first, the big question — why do you want to undertake further study? Is it to upgrade your skills and knowledge in order to advance your career? Is it to gain an academic qualification to formalise your years of work experience? Are you unhappy with the current direction of your career? Do you simply want to expand and explore other areas of interest?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, read below to find out which program type and level are likely to suit your needs.

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Degrees for different purposes

Postgraduate programs fall into a number of different categories.

There are those designed for professional development and those for exploring other areas of interest. You can divide those in the professional development category further into two types.

The first is designed to help you to further develop your skills and knowledge in an area that is already familiar to you, i.e. an ‘upgrade’. Entry to programs of this type in fields such as accounting, engineering, nursing, and law, require a previous relevant degree, often coupled with appropriate work or industry experience.

The second type is designed for students wanting to change careers and enter a completely new field or profession. To enter these programs you need a degree, but not from any particular field. However, there are programs in this category that might require some background in related subjects. For example, a few of the graduate-entry medicine degrees might require some knowledge of science.

On the other hand, there are plenty of programs designed for anyone who simply wants to explore their interest in a particular subject. Entry requirements will depend on the field that interests you but these programs will generally not specify any particular prerequisite subjects other than a degree for entry.

A summary of the qualifications to consider for these different purposes, and their entry requirements is below.

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Other things to consider

Each program is a unique mix of many different ingredients, ranging from its particular subject matter, to the kinds of people who study and teach it, to the jobs it leads to.

The following is a list of those ingredients. You can use it as a checklist of things you need to find out about courses of interest.

• Subject matter. This may seem too obvious to mention, but don't forget that different programs teach very different things. They have to be things you want to know or things that are professionally relevant.
• Entry difficulty. Don't forget that most courses are offered at many institutions, and entry difficulty varies considerably. Generally, shorter graduate certificates will be the easiest to get into and doctorates the hardest. However, there are a range of factors that impact on your chances of admission at postgraduate level, including the professional relevance of the programs (do you need experience?) and the field.
• Difficulty of the course. Programs do vary a lot in the numbers who drop out or fail. VET courses are generally (but not always) less demanding than university courses.
• How long they take. Masters can take two years of full-time study or more. Graduate certificates are shorter. Other qualifications are in between.
• How much choice they allow. Some have a fixed menu (everyone gets the same). But if you and your best friend both do arts, or science, you might not do a single subject or unit together.
• How you can study. Some programs you can do full-time, part-time or by distance education (the course comes to you via books, study guides, computer disks, radio, TV, audio and dvd’s, etc.). Many can't be done by distance education, and some can't be done part time either.
• Who you will study with. Some programs have small numbers and little choice of subjects, so you spend your years with the same tight little group. Easy to make contacts, but can be claustrophobic.
• Status and prestige. If you want to know what the pecking order is for university courses, look at the differences in entry requirements.
• Quality. It's hard to define, but you'll know when you're not getting it. What you should aim to get, at least some of the time, is sheer intellectual excitement, the shock of the new and the strange. At the very least a program should be solid, well run and worth the trouble.
• Cost. Some programs have Commonwealth Supported Places (CSP) at postgraduate level. However, in most others, you do pay fees which vary from one course (and state / territory) to another. Other costs (books and stationery, etc.) always run to hundreds of dollars and sometimes a thousand or more a year.
• Where you can do it. Most courses are offered in a range of locations, but some are available in selected cities and centres only.
• Where it leads to. It may lead, simply, to being better educated, a fact which is often overlooked. But to the extent that you want your course to help you progress your career, it is important to check out the graduate outcomes in the Fields of Study Rating Table.

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