How do you know if you need professional development?

You've been working in the same field for several years, and perhaps you feel that despite this, you're stuck in one place and not growing in tasks? Are you considering a change in career trajectory? Or are you looking to take a leap in your career, and the jobs you're aiming for require a different level of expertise and qualifications? If you're in this or similar situations, earning additional and focused education gives you the skills and knowledge you need to take that next step in your career.

Are you sure now is a good time to learn?

While you may feel like the world is in limbo and a recession looms ahead, now is the perfect time to build those missing skills. Many companies have halted recruitment and the pandemic has forced universities to switch to blended and online learning, which was considered impossible a few years ago.

We don't recommend going straight to graduate school after a bachelor's or specialist degree. It's good practice to get 2-3 years of work experience so you know exactly what you're missing and go after it."

What are the options for continuing education.

A great reason to go back to college is to change your major. Entrance requirements, previous education, and work experience vary from school to school, so you need to know in advance what the school needs, and which education track is right for you based on your budget, time, study schedule density, study format, work-study balance, and so on. Some programs are designed specifically for working professionals who want to improve their knowledge without leaving work. As a rule, these are evening, part-time and modular programs that do not require constant presence at the university campus. You can either go to study a completely different major again for a bachelor's degree (3-4 years) or, if you don't change your major too much, go on to a master's degree (1-2 years), a postgraduate degree (3-6 years). You can, in principle, enter magistracy and completely different specialty, some universities allow it, but then the quality of education will suffer: in a year or two from scratch you will need to master what bachelors and specialists have been doing for 3-5 years. The number of academic hours will be two to three times less. A second or third master's degree is not prohibited. With the second postgraduate degree and a downgrade (from postgraduate to master's degree) is more difficult, but also possible.

Other programs of MBA, although, in fact, are the same master's programs, but in the field of business and management. Here too there are variants of full-time (full time) or evening (part time) training, with the final thesis or project. There are Executive MBA programs, which are designed for specialists with management experience of 10 years or more. They as a rule are modular, when several times a year you have to come to campus for a week or two, allowing you to combine full-time work with intensive interval studies. It is important to distinguish these from just certificates and diplomas (without the prefix graduate). The latter can refer to any course in terms of length, focus, and quality that is less than, or sometimes at the same level as, a bachelor's degree. Graduate diploma/certificate allow graduates of bachelor's or specialist's degrees, master's degrees, etc. to acquire knowledge (the main thing is to have a degree). (the main thing is to have a degree) to gain knowledge in a narrowly defined area, they are designed to develop skills in a specific professional field or niche. A certificate course usually lasts six months and a diploma course usually lasts a year. Because of their length and the fact that they do not lead to a degree, they are easier to enter and less expensive to teach.

With many schools going online, it is important to understand how exactly the learning process will be structured and whether it will be possible to attend seminars with other students at the same time, since teamwork and interaction with students (peer learning) are very important parts of the process. It is better to find out in advance who is lecturing and teaching the classes (spoiler: these are not always the people you see on the website), class sizes, access to the online library and other university resources (career coaching, mentoring, training), etc.

When choosing an institution it is important to pay attention to these points:

1. What is the alumni pool of the school. Who are these people? Is it possible to talk to them? Where do they work?"

2. How does the institution rank compared to others in that field/niche?"

3. What does the institution's website look like, what does it talk about on social media, what technology in education does it use?"

4. What experience does the institution have in online teaching? Have they been teaching online for a long time, or does the process look more like a rush job?"

Try searching for programs in our search engine: https://studyqa.com/ If you are looking for something but it's not on our platform, contact us: info@studyqa.com and we will try to help you.