By Pooben Narayanen
Africa-Press – Mauritius. If you are about to complete your undergraduate degree, you may be thinking: what next? A postgraduate degree? Some of you may have already applied for your master’s degree even before you finished.
Some of you may be thinking about whether this is something you want to pursue. There are a couple of things you should consider when you are in the planning process.
Do your parents or you have the means to pay for another degree immediately after completing your undergraduate studies. If you studied in Mauritius at one of our public universities, then you did not pay for your undergraduate studies.
Therefore, your parents, or yourself, if you are funding your own studies, may have the means to provide the financial support that you need. Keep in mind master’s degrees are not cheap, at the University of Mauritius you are looking at a minimum of Rs 120,000. If you have studied overseas this will be exponentially higher. Which begs the question: is the timing right?
Real world experience
Your undergraduate degree is one of the tools that will help you get into your desired line of work, but it may not have allowed you to get actual hands-on work experience.
Let’s say you pursued a degree in marketing, and throughout the entire program you did not work or undertake an internship, you may be up to speed with the latest theories, but you lack hands-on experience.
You could try to enter a master’s degree in marketing immediately after your first degree, but you will not be as ‘marketable’ as someone who completed an undergraduate degree in marketing, worked for a year or two, then started a master’s in marketing, specialising in a specific marketing field – for example, branding.
This makes any job seeker more attractive on the job market when they complete their master’s degree. The reason is that they have real world experience, their approach to their master’s degree will be different from that of a job candidate who has never worked in the field.
They have seen firsthand how the theory is applied and what works. It is one of the reasons why most prestigious business schools expect who apply for an MBA to have work experience.
An added benefit to working before you start your degree is that it will help you make a better choice of what field you would like to pursue or specialise in. Working gives you an idea of where your line of work is going in the future.
Let us say you completed an undergraduate degree in journalism, you start working for a radio station and find that you are best suited for digital media, then you can pursue a master’s degree in digital media.
You may also find that journalism is not for you, that the administration side of things is more to your liking — then you can look into an MBA. The exposure from working cannot be replicated 100% in the classroom.
http://www.mauritiustimes.com/mt/masters-degree-to-do-or-not-to-do/
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