Online courses

I’m 30+ years old and all throughout my 20’s I felt I had settled for a simple easy job (factory work) just because it felt like a stress free, straight forward job. I’ve always been very switched on and smart despite not doing much at school due to my preference to messing about with friends. Now I’m a dad and the monotony of my current job has finally flicked a switch in my head. I’ve been up and down throughout my ‘factory career’ from bottom of the barrel working my way up to supervisor and even on the brink of floor manager before I turned it down. Anyway, I recently thought about looking for online courses, to which I found a job website offering numerous free courses ranging from childcare to business. My question is, maybe stupid, are these worthwhile, do these qualifications stand up for anything? I know it’s silly because they’re free so they’re probably worth doing but I didn’t know if it would be a waste of time as such.

TIA

I appreciate you want more from your career. Are any of your skills transferable? If you're already good with your hands and working with tools perhaps an apprenticeship in a trade might give you the opportunity you're looking for? Alternatively if you are looking for a qualification what career would you like after you obtain that? Some clarity of where you want to go with your career would help others to give you some advice.

In all honesty, I would suggest looking to do an online degree. These are usually much cheaper than attending in person and will give you the exact same qualification as someone who does attend in person. Of course, these do cost money, however you pay per module so the cost is more spread out than a lumps sum. My brother is currently doing his masters at uni of leeds as he is also working full time. I also know countless people who have taken undergrad while being in full time work also.

Most jobs these days want some level of degree qualification, unless you want a career change to go into a role that can be achieved via apprenticeship, which could be more difficult based on your age.

Even if you studied e.g. philosophy, you don’t have to go into a job about this, as lots of jobs just want to hire you on the basis you have the capability to push yourself and achieve qualifications of this standard.

So I would suggest doing a subject you enjoy at an undergrad bsc level.