Are you considering furthering your education?

Have you thought about getting that degree in another country?

I’m not talking about vacationing. If you’re interested in pursuing a Master’s degree and would rather get it all done in 1 year instead of 2-3, while still learning what you need to know, you should consider looking at programs in the United Kingdom.

I’m speaking from a unique point of view. Right after college, I went on to get a Master’s degree in Theology here in the United States. It took me three years. So aside from the cost of tuition, which was broken down by semester, that was three years of living expenses I had to come up with and three years when I couldn’t work full time.*

Tuition for Master’s degrees average between $20,000-$60,000 and that’s just for the degree. To compound the pain of those $60,000 degrees, consider that’s the price tag for the elite schools, you know, the one’s with the name everyone wants on the degree, and they are often in urban settings, where the cost of living is considerably higher as well.

Granted, you are hopefully not paying the sticker price. There are countless scholarships available to graduate students both from the institution they are applying to and from outside sources, the same as undergrads. Furthermore, if you’re willing to study certain topics within your field of interest, you’re likely to be able to find even more funding (this becomes even more true as you move on to the doctoral level).

After a few years out in the real world, I decided I wanted to continue my education. Since my world view had broadened considerably during this time, I was actually chatting about it with a British friend onboard a ship we were working on and he mentioned that if I was looking to get a Master’s degree, programs were only 1 year in the United Kingdom and that America accepted Master’s degrees from British intuitions.

I did a few Google searches and applied to a school in Sheffield. I was accepted into their Theatre & Performance Studies Master’s program (although they call it a post-graduate taught programme, post-graduate research is a PhD) almost immediately. Score one for the Brits and NOT making you wait months for a decision.

The school did have international scholarships, which I applied for but didn’t get. I also could’ve applied for a lot of American scholarships that would’ve worked overseas, but I applied at the last minute and sort of on a whim, so I wound up funding this degree myself.

A few things to keep in mind: Tuition in England worked out to roughly the same as tuition in the United States, except I was paying it over one year instead of three. Furthermore, to get my student visa, I had to have all that money already sitting in a bank account along with living expenses. Living expenses are considered £800 per month outside of London and £1000 per month inside of London (FYI – that’s also probably an underestimate of how much much money you’ll need per month). I was happy to be living in the middle nowhere.

So you would probably need to either apply for all of your student loans early. Personally, I had a huge loan from the Bank of Grandma to get through grad school, so she just gave it to me immediately and then my dad loaned me about $10,000 to put in my bank account for a month (because the money had to have been in your bank account for a month) and once I received my visa, I gave it right back to him and applied for the student loans I needed much further along in the year.

Altogether, my British Master’s degree cost about $40,000. I had about $10,000 in savings that I put towards it and was left with $30,000 of debt. However, since I paid that degree off in about two and a half years, it still feels to me like I came out ahead. That would’ve been the cost of a degree alone in America, and then I would’ve had three years of living expenses piled on top of it AND lost an extra two years of income.

If you’re considering applying to school in the U.K., you’ll want to research Tier 4 (General) student visas even more thoroughly.

A student visa costs about $500 and has to be renewed yearly. And it is cheapest to renew it while you’re in your home country, so plan a 3 week vacation back to see the folks each year. To apply you also need your acceptance letter from the school and proof that you can speak English, which is assumed as an American and a handful of other countries considered “majority English language speaking” (until you go to write your first term paper, get it returned all marked up over spelling and grammar and realize you do not actually know English).

Finally, if you’re considering going on for graduate degrees, you probably kind of like school, or you’ve got to be wondering a little about the quality of education in a program that lasts three years versus one that lasted one. I know I would be.

To be quite honest, the education I received in England put my American education to shame.

In America, I felt like I was mostly jumping through of series of hoops to be handed a piece of paper. Through three years of courses, I feel like I took maybe a handful that were genuinely challenging and extended my views on things. Also, my program had about 180 people in it. Granted, not every class was 180 people and we were split into sub disciplines as well, but my smallest classes over there were never less than 15 people… and those are actually the classes I think really made my degree worth it. I also had a good handful of classes that were an absolute joke.

In England, I felt like an absolute moron every second I was in class. I could not believe how behind I felt all the time. Everything was a constant struggle… which meant I was learning pretty much every second I was there.

When I walked away with that degree, my knowledge about Theatre & Performance Studies had quadrupled. I had developed several long-term interests in subjects I didn’t even know existed a few months earlier. I actually still felt passionate about the subject matter instead of just burnt out and angry. I haven’t managed to shake the urge to go back to complete a doctorate since I left.

It’s also amazing what a class size of 5 does. We had one class where they left about 5 upperclassman undergrads in, which brought us up to the whopping number of 10, and we had one class with the doctoral students that also brought us up to about 10. There is no avoiding the work or having an off day in classes like that, or when you do, everyone knows.

And I had an amazing multicultural experience and learned a lot about myself while living in a different country. Not gonna lie, its way cheaper to explore mainland Europe from England too. ;o)

Anyone else out there gotten a degree from another country? Did it make you feel like our education system here in the US is pretty overrated too?

 

*Online education is another great option to look into, especially if you need to continue working full time while in school. I feel like it’s really lost the stigma it had years ago. There are also lots of schools that offer hybrid options, for instance, I finished the last semester of that Theology degree with online classes while working full time. I did the first five semesters in classrooms.