Why do Postgraduate Study?
"Personally, I am not focused solely on attracting people into long-term masters courses," says Doug Grant, Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology.
Instead, Grant claims smart educational institutions are more interested in talking with individual students about what their needs are and finding the particular approach to postgraduate education that best suits them.
"Whether it is certification, a master's or something in between, what we want to do is to be customer focused," he says.
According to Grant, the chief arguments in favour of postgraduate study are:
- You have the opportunity to get a broader conceptual understanding of the discipline that you're studying. And laying that on top of an undergraduate level degree can help you move toward being an expert practitioner or a manager of expert practitioners
- Postgraduate education gives you a chance to study deeply in a particular area, with good conceptual training that lets you reach a more advanced level of understanding.
- There are many employers out there who prefer people who have the more traditional, formal credentials, particularly if they expect to move into senior positions.