Part-time studying If you decide to go straight into work after college or an apprenticeship, it doesn’t mean you can’t study for qualifications later on. What if you are looking to change direction in your career, but can’t afford to stop working to study full time, for example? Lots of people decide to go to university later in life - either using their existing experience to do a ‘top-up’ degree, or taking the time out to do a three-year undergraduate degree. Or you can study part-time for professional qualifications in areas like marketing, accounting, HR, and computing.
For many years in the UK, people working in a range of professions have organised themselves into groups to learn from each other, to support each other and to share good practice. These groups, known as professional bodies or institutions, have developed training courses and qualifications, partly as a means to develop their members, but also as a way to maintain standards amongst their members; to build professional reputations. They also provide the range of support in the way a trades union might offer. Many of these institutions are now international bodies, with their qualifications recognised across the globe. Amongst these we could include 8
Make The Future Yours! Issue 1
accountancy, human resources, marketing and management, to name just a few. The benefit of getting a qualification written by a professional body is that it will certainly help you develop your career in that trade or profession. The qualification has been written by people with experience of doing that job so it will be very relevant. It will be recognised and respected not just by other people within the profession, but by other professionals who understand what it signifies. This has been proven in recent years when we have seen more and more new apprenticeship standards adopt existing industry qualifications.
