Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm currently really struggling with work because of all the responsibilities and overstimulation and debating going back to education so I can have some more control over my schedule and also open up some more career opportunities. I thought OU could be good because it's online so there's less social stress. Specifically interested in doing a Psychology degree with Open University (full-time) because this has been my special interest for years now.
Has anyone done a degree with OU? Would you recommend full-time? Did you find that they were supportive and understanding of autistic people?
Yes a long time ago.
did it get you a high paying job is the real question as to whether it was worth it really?usually degrees and stuff are to unclock jobs above minimum wage, into the 50k plus a year range.
Or one can enjoy learning for its own sake ... Doing a degree with the OU is probably not much more expensive than a gym membership or buying a round down the pub every week.
I remember my A levels and asking for help from my teacher with a previous year's exam question. His answer, "That's an unusual type of question it's unlikely to come up this year.". Translation: he hadn't a clue how to answer it. In reality it was a bog standard question that tested understanding of the basics and a very similar question came up in the actual A level exam.
I agree with you about the diffrence between school and uni teachers, most of my teacher's wern't interested in teaching us anything, school was more like a warehouse for adolescent girls.
The big difference between school and a top class university is that at university the lecturer often is an expert who sets his own syllabus and marks his own exams. At school, half the teachers are ignorant of half the syllabus.
Being taught by people who really knew their subject was one of the things I found most rewarding at uni. We had 30% from course work and 70% from exams and a distertation in the final year.
Education varies from institution to institution. In the better UK universities you are actually taught by leading experts in their field and you have to pass rigourous exams. Some of the former polytechnics are experimenting with course work only because taking exams could be detrimental to students mental health!
When I was at the Open university they were 50 :50 exams and course work. But, one had to pass both components. You could get 100% in the coursework but still fail the course because you still had to pass the exam.