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Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#121

Post by barry-cotter »

inhumantsar wrote: post #102
barry-cotter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University of London. There’s more than one Master’s degree that allows you to take individual modules as stand alone qualification and once you hit the limit you transfer to being a Master’s student proper. I did Finance. Last I looked the London School of Tropical Medicine also did this. If they offer a Postgraduate Certificate they’ll probably take your money for an individual module if you have any evidence you c…

Thanks for this insight. I've been looking for programs like these. There are plenty of MBA programs but I'm more interested in doing a CS degree. I have a decade of experience in software development and a smattering of Coursera certificates in relevant areas. Doing a BSc feels like it would be, not a waste exactly but inefficient and overly expensive. But it looks like University of London they offer a PCert->MSc p…

> Did you do the micro-master because you didn't have (much) relevant experience in the field? How important do you think it was on your application?

I did it so I could show some reason to admit me to the course. Absent any relevant work experience they needed some evidence I could think think and write. They asked for a notarized copy as part of the application process. Legible bureaucratic qualifications are a good thing to have if you’re trying to get another legible bureaucratic qualification.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#122

Post by barry-cotter »

cluelessmaker wrote: post #100
barry-cotter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University of London. There’s more than one Master’s degree that allows you to take individual modules as stand alone qualification and once you hit the limit you transfer to being a Master’s student proper. I did Finance. Last I looked the London School of Tropical Medicine also did this. If they offer a Postgraduate Certificate they’ll probably take your money for an individual module if you have any evidence you c…

If I do edx micromasters, will they consider for Msc computer science or related courses?

I imagine they would but it’s not like I work there. The M.Sc. Computer Science does individual modules as stand alone qualifications.

https://www.london.ac.uk/courses/msc-computer-science#progra...

Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#124

Post by monkeycantype »

wbc wrote: post #23
monkeycantype wrote: post #13

I'm a software developer, and had got into a rut of working for finance companies, because they have the money. I'm in my early 50's with four kids, three still at home, and I'm working my way slowly through a biomedical science degree, already it's given me the domain knowledge to able switch industries - I'm still a software developer but now in a biomed startup and much happier for it. One of my colleagues just co…

Can you talk more about the transition? Did you start over w/ bachelors in biology? Are you taking classes online/on the side? I'm in a very similar situation as you and want to jump into grad school, but it looks like that's not possible w/o undergraduate degree.

Well I'm definitely not FIRE.

Prior to the pandemic my partner and I were thinking of taking our family to Italy, I'd begun lining up a remote part-time job, and was looking at doing a masters in Italy at the university of Padua, one of the world's oldest universities, you can study in English and it's cheap.

You already know why that didn't happen.

I decided to start over with an undergraduate degree in biomedicine, because that's what I wanted to do. If you want to go straight to a masters, I wouldn't discount the possibility.

Here are some sites I found useful:

https://www.unipd.it/en/ https://www.unibo.it/en

https://www.mastersportal.com/ https://www.distancelearningportal.com/countries/

During the pandemic local universities that normally have large numbers of foreign students were desperate for new students, fees were lowered on a number of subjects and everything went online , and they got very loose about deadlines - everything was asynchronous, so I was do all my school work after hours and on weekends, and I used leave to take time off for exams - in Australia we have a minimum 4 weeks annual leave. I live outside Melbourne, which had the longest sustained lockdowns anywhere, maybe it's been surpassed now, officially there were ~260 days of lockdowns, things are only really starting to open up again now. I used this time to do the introductory science subjects that normally have long in-person lab sessions. Classes are still only partially back on campus, and will probably remain mostly asynchronous forever. So that's how I have been able to study and work. As to how I made the transition, I applied for jobs, but it's was through word of mouth that I got to speak to the biomed start up I'm now working for. I think it was pretty novel for them to meet someone who had a strong software background, and was interested and contributing to a discussion about physiology so we hit it off and now I'm working with them full-time, and more productive and satisfied with work than I been for, well ever actually.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#125

Post by reify »

I left school with no qualifications.

Began my introduction to academia as an undergraduate at 36 years old I started my masters degree when I was 40 for a further 2 years. I am now 64 years old.

The main contributor of a successful adult education is life experience, something you do not have when you are 20 years old starting out as an undergraduate. You cannot buy or learn from any tomes about life experience. It must be a lived experience.

I found I had a focused commitment and an enthusiasm for the subject I studied.

A PhD is philosophising in your choice of subject, whether that be the sciences or in my case psychotherapy, and not a post graduate degree in philosophy.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#126

Post by gabrieledarrigo »

Ciao, Not exactly in my 40s, but I started a bachelor's degree in Computer Science (in Italy) just five years ago, at age 35, while working, and I completed it successfully last April! It was tough; I invested much of my free time into it, especially during the first years with mathematics! My advice is not to fear failure, don't be impatience, take your time and go on. It doesn't matter if other students are faster or pass multiple courses at once; find your rhythm, do one thing and do it well, and everything will be fine.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#127

Post by dahart »

vitus wrote: post #60
dahart wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me it smells like a vanity play, unless you’re doing it so you can get another 100k per year. Hehe, it’s vanity unless you’re only doing it for money? This is twisted! ;) > The world is moving to a place where degrees are no longer worth what they were in almost every profession Do you have any stats or data to back this up? This is a common trope here and elsewhere (ala “Joe the Plumber”), but it seems to be la…

> This data isn’t a statistical sampling, BTW, the Fed has data on all US citizens. Actually... that report leans very heavily on the Survey of Consumer Finances [0], which is absolutely a sampling (latest iteration was 6500 families out of the 120 million households in the US). Per page 3 of the report: "We use the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which covers family heads born throughout t…

Oh, thanks for the correction. I guess I got the incorrect idea that the Fed had access to IRS income data last time I looked at this paper a couple years ago. Hopefully the small sample size doesn’t do too much damage to the accuracy of the “income premium” of college education, and the basic point that people should be aware of the income premium before claiming that education is not worth the cost.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start higher education after 40?

#128

Post by smeej »

Silverback_VII wrote: post #61
smeej wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true in many cases, but without more context for the question, it isn't helpful here. If someone's trying to change fields into one that requires a credential (I was recently looking into a pivot into becoming a psychologist or a counselor for someone), it doesn't really make any difference if the material could be learned another way, even if it could be learned better that way.

>If someone's trying to change fields into one that requires a credential. If you need credentials then somebody needs to care about those credentials which means that you will be someone's employee. You will be stuck on what MJ DeMarco calls the slow lane. Even more so if you get into debt because of it. Howerver, I think big discoveries, money or writing a bestselling book do not care about your credentials. You ca…

This simply isn't true. There are LOTS of fields where you're more than free to hang a shingle and run your own business, even hiring your own employees, but not without the credential.

Lawyers can have their own firms. Doctors can have their own practices. LOTS of psychotherapists have their own practices. There's nothing "slow lane" about it for the ones who do it well.

But if they don't have the requisite credential, they get shut down.

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