Part-time postgraduates - How many days a week did you attend uni?

Hi, I'm a mature student (28) considering going back to uni doing a part-time postgraduate in law or politics. Due to home commitments and my location, I'd likely have to travel a fair way to whichever uni I choose, so I was hoping for a general estimate of how many days a week I'd have to travel. I know it's probably dependent on the university and course, but as I've not decided which as of yet, I thought I'd try and get a ballpark figure here. Thank you.

Hi, I'm a mature student (28) considering going back to uni doing a part-time postgraduate in law or politics. Due to home commitments and my location, I'd likely have to travel a fair way to whichever uni I choose, so I was hoping for a general estimate of how many days a week I'd have to travel. I know it's probably dependent on the university and course, but as I've not decided which as of yet, I thought I'd try and get a ballpark figure here. Thank you.

Hi @CaseyRhys,

You've hit the nail on the head when you've said that it's almost wholly dependant upon the university and the course. As a result giving a ballpark is very difficult because there are so many variables.

Several of my friends are part-time PG students. Some of them are only on campus one day a week, others need to be there for two or three (but usually only for part of each day), and for others they might only come to campus once a fortnight.

For many postgraduates there is also a difference between how often they *need* to be on campus and how often they *want* to be on campus. My MA was full-time but I only had classes on 2-3 days of each week so, in theory, I could work from home the majority of the time. In addition to my classes, however, there was optional research training, postgraduate social events, and research dissemination events (lunchtime lectures & research talks etc.) that I chose to attend. These weren't required but they were, in my opinion, very valuable to my development as a postgraduate researcher. There were also times when I'd need to go to campus to work in or use the library, access campus printing facilities etc.

So when you're calculating how often you're going to be travelling and how many days you'll be spending on campus, allow a bit of extra time for optional training events, socialising, and times when you'll need to be on campus to do independent research.

It might also be worth asking current students on the course you choose - and/or staff at the university - what days the majority of research events/training in your department take place, and when the main postgraduate social events are. At Keele, for example, our postgraduate union run a regular weekly coffee morning on a Thursday and there are monthly research talks in my department on a Wednesday afternoon. You might not be able to attend everything if you're part-time but knowing when the key events are should help you to plan your week.

Hope that helps!

Amy Louise
PhD Candidate & Student Ambassador, Keele University

There's no ball park, except 'half the time a full time student would'. Different courses are run in different ways. For example, my part-time Masters required 4 mandatory weeks of full time attendance per year, fixed weeks, lectures running 0900-1700 every day with evening seminars as well, ie they crammed the full term's work into a week.

So you have to look at each specific course and how it is structured. In total tie, they are all half the time of the full time course though.

Hi, I'm a mature student (28) considering going back to uni doing a part-time postgraduate in law or politics. Due to home commitments and my location, I'd likely have to travel a fair way to whichever uni I choose, so I was hoping for a general estimate of how many days a week I'd have to travel. I know it's probably dependent on the university and course, but as I've not decided which as of yet, I thought I'd try and get a ballpark figure here. Thank you.