Live and learn. Part 3. Continuing education or the age of the eternal student
So, you graduated from high school. Yesterday or 15 years ago - it does not matter. You can exhale, work, not sleep in pairs, take off from solving specific problems and narrow down your specialization as much as possible to become an expensive professional. Or vice versa - choose what you like, delve into various fields and technologies, look for yourself in the profession. The study is over, finally and irrevocably. Or not? Or do you want (really needed) to defend a dissertation, go to study in pleasure, learn a new specialty, get crusts for pragmatic career goals? Or maybe one morning you will get up and feel an unknown craving for a pen and notebook, for the consumption of new information in a pleasant company of adult students? Well, the hardest thing - what if you're an eternal student ?!
Today we will talk about whether there is training after high school, how a person and his perception are changing, what motivates and what demotivates us all to study, study and study again.
This is the third part of the cycle "Live and Learn!"
Part 1. School and career guidance
Part 2. University
Part 3. Further education
Part 4. Education inside work
Part 5. Self-education
Share your experience in the comments - maybe, thanks to the efforts of the RUVDS team and Habr’s readers, someone’s education will be a little more informed, correct and fruitful.
Master's program is a logical continuation of higher education (in particular, undergraduate studies). It provides in-depth information on specialized subjects, expands and deepens the professional theoretical base.
A master's degree is chosen in several cases.
The biggest problem of the magistracy is that the same teachers read there as in the specialty and undergraduate studies, and most often this happens according to the same manuals and practices, that is, time is wasted. And if bachelors have an objective need for a “second part of training”, then specialists in the same field should choose a different way of deepening knowledge.
But if you decide to enroll in a magistracy not in your profile, then I will give you some tips for preparation.
If you have decided to study, study honestly and in good faith - after all, you study for yourself in the master's program.
The most classic version of continuing higher education for ambitious children who are ready to make their contribution to science. For admission to graduate school, you must pass three exams: a foreign language, philosophy and history of science, a specialized subject in a specialty. Full-time postgraduate study lasts 3 years, in correspondence - 4 years. In the full-time budget post-graduate course, the post-graduate student receives a scholarship (total for the year 13 = 12 regular + one subsidy “for books”). During the course, the graduate student does several basic things:
At the end of the graduate school (including early or extended under certain circumstances), the graduate student defends (or does not defend) his dissertation and after some time receives the coveted certificate of a candidate of science, and when he reaches the necessary success in teaching and developing teaching aids, he also holds the title of assistant professor .
Really boring? And it even smells a bit old books, library cloth and glue custom envelopes. But everything changes when it comes - the army! From the shelter of those who work, graduate school becomes the subject of fierce competition from guys who do not want to serve. At the same time, they definitely need full-time postgraduate study, and there are treacherously few places in any department. If you add a little doom, corruption, sympathy from the commission, then the chances melt away ...
In fact, there are some tips for entering graduate school for any purpose.
Postgraduate study is about the same as in a university: periodic lectures (should be in-depth, but depends on the experience and conscience of the teacher), discussion of fragments of the dissertation with the supervisor, teaching, etc. Greatly takes time from work and personal life, but in principle tolerant, in comparison with a full-time university - in general, paradise.
We leave out the topic of writing a dissertation — these are three separate posts. One of my favorite articles on a subject is this on Habré .
Defending yourself or not is entirely your choice. Here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
Minuses:
In general, the question of whether it is worth defending myself, from the height of experience I will answer this way: “If you have time, money and brains - yes, it’s worth it. Then everything will be lazier and lazier, although with practical experience it will be somewhat simpler. ”
Important: if you are defending precisely because you have something to say in science and there is no goal of rejecting, gaining a foothold in a university or receiving post-graduate scholarship, you can apply for - this form of postgraduate education is cheaper than paid graduate school, is not limited by tight deadlines and does not require entrance examinations.
One of my employers said that not having two higher educations in our time is simply indecent. And the truth is, sooner or later it comes to us along with the need for a change in specialty, for career growth, for wages or simply out of boredom.
Let's define the terminology: the second higher education is education, as a result of which a new specialist is formed with certain theoretical knowledge and practical skills, and a diploma of state education is a certificate of it. That is, this is the classic way: from 3 to 6 courses, sessions, exams, state degrees and diploma defense.
Today, a second higher education can be obtained in several ways (depending on the specialty and university).
It is easiest to get a second education in your own university: familiar teachers, easy recounting of subjects, often convenient payment by installment mechanisms, common infrastructure, familiar atmosphere, your own classmates as part of a group (usually there are several such students per stream). But it is precisely the training at your university that turns out to be the most ineffective in terms of the growth of knowledge and skills, because it happens by inertia and more for the sake of "everyone ran, and I ran."
However, the motives are different, and it is worth considering what drives the applicants to the second higher and how the quality of their training is connected with this, how much the expended forces and nerves pay off.
The most dangerous thing in the process of obtaining a second higher education is to allow yourself to study like on the first: to skip, cram on the last night, ignore self-training, etc. Still, this is the formation of a conscious person for quite rational goals. The investment must be effective.
Unlike the second higher, this is a shorter-term education aimed at increasing competencies or gaining a new specialty within the existing one. When you receive additional education, in most cases you will not come across a general educational blog of disciplines (and you will not pay for them), and information at lectures and seminars is more concentrated. The teachers are different, it’s just as lucky: they can be the same university ones, but they can be real practitioners who know which side to present the theory to make it useful to you.
There are two forms of continuing education.
Refresher courses (trainings, seminars here) - the shortest type of continuing education, from 16 hours. The task of the courses is as simple as possible - to expand knowledge in some narrow issue so that the student can come to the office and put them into practice. For example, CRM training will help a salesperson sell more efficiently, and a prototyping course will help an office analyst or project manager make advanced prototypes for colleagues, rather than draw on the whiteboard.
As a rule, this is a good way to get the maximum information squeezed out of hundreds of books and resources for you, to pump skill, to sort out the existing knowledge on shelves. Only before training, be sure to read the reviews and avoid too hyped and annoying trainers and institutions (we will not call, we think you yourself know these companies).
By the way, continuing education courses are one of the non-standard forms of team building, combining communication, a new environment and benefits. Much better than bowling or drinking together.
Professional retraining - long-term training of 250 hours, during which the specialty is deepened significantly or its vector changes. For example, the Python Long Course is a professional retraining course for a programmer, and the Software Development course is for an engineer.
As a rule, an introductory interview is handed in for a retraining course to identify the level of training and primary skills of a specialist, but it happens that everyone is enrolled (after 2-3 lessons, the extra ones will drop out anyway). The rest of the study is very similar to the senior courses of the university: specialization, exams, control and often final work and its defense. Students of such courses are motivated, ready-made practices, it is interesting to learn and communicate, the atmosphere is democratic, the teacher is available for questions and discussions. If there are problems, they can always be solved with a course practitioner - nevertheless, this is an education for your money, often considerable.
By the way, experience shows that in most universities the most unsuccessful course of professional retraining is English. The fact is that it is conducted by university teachers, they are cool about the matter, and in fact you just do the exercises from the textbook and workbook. In this regard, a well-chosen language school with the practice of live communication is not an example better, but dear FDPO of Russian universities will forgive me.
Further education is a great way to solve problems with missing skills, try something new, try to change jobs, or just believe in yourself. But again, read reviews, choose state universities, and not the various "universities of all Russia and the Universe."
Outside of this article, there were several more types of additional education that are not classified as “classical”: corporate university training, language schools (offline), programming schools (offline), online education — anything. We will definitely return to them in parts 4 and 5, as they are already more associated with work than with the basic higher education of a specialist.
In general, learning is always useful, but I urge you to be selective and clearly understand what kind of motive drives you, is it worth it to spend time and money solely for the sake of extra paper or the realization of internal ambitions.
Tell us in the comments how many higher and additional education you have, do you have a scientific degree, which experience was successful and which is not very?
And if you have already grown up and you are missing something for development, for example, a good powerful VPS , go to the RUVDS website - we have a lot of interesting things.
Today we will talk about whether there is training after high school, how a person and his perception are changing, what motivates and what demotivates us all to study, study and study again.
This is the third part of the cycle "Live and Learn!"
Part 1. School and career guidance
Part 2. University
Part 3. Further education
Part 4. Education inside work
Part 5. Self-education
Share your experience in the comments - maybe, thanks to the efforts of the RUVDS team and Habr’s readers, someone’s education will be a little more informed, correct and fruitful.
▍Master
Master's program is a logical continuation of higher education (in particular, undergraduate studies). It provides in-depth information on specialized subjects, expands and deepens the professional theoretical base.
A master's degree is chosen in several cases.
- As a continuation of the undergraduate program, students simply pass the profile exams and continue their studies, as in senior courses.
- As a deepening of a specialty, a specialist with 5-6 courses chooses a magistracy to deepen and consolidate knowledge, get an additional diploma, and sometimes just to stay a student longer (for various reasons).
- As a way to receive additional education on the basis of higher education. A very difficult challenge: you need to learn a “foreign” profile subject and enroll in a magistracy (most often for a fee), passing through a competition with native students of the selected university. However, a completely possible story and this particular motivation seems to me one of the most justified.
The biggest problem of the magistracy is that the same teachers read there as in the specialty and undergraduate studies, and most often this happens according to the same manuals and practices, that is, time is wasted. And if bachelors have an objective need for a “second part of training”, then specialists in the same field should choose a different way of deepening knowledge.
But if you decide to enroll in a magistracy not in your profile, then I will give you some tips for preparation.
- Start cooking in about a year, at least from the previous fall. Take a ticket plan for the entrance exams and proceed with the analysis of tickets. If the specialty is very different from yours (the economist went to psychologists, the programmer to engineers), be prepared for the fact that you will be waiting for specific difficulties with subjects. Overcoming them takes time.
- Ask questions on thematic forums, sites, in groups. Even better, if you find a person with the chosen specialty and ask him about the "secrets of the future profession."
- Get ready for several sources, work on the preparation almost every day, repeat the materials.
- At the entrance exams, position yourself as a specialist who is interested in learning, and does not go for the sake of a piece of paper or a tick. This makes a good impression and smooths out the possible jambs of the answer (if this is not a test or a written exam).
- Do not be nervous - this is no longer an obligation and not a duty to parents, just your desire, your choice. No one will blame you for failure.
If you have decided to study, study honestly and in good faith - after all, you study for yourself in the master's program.
▍ Graduate school
The most classic version of continuing higher education for ambitious children who are ready to make their contribution to science. For admission to graduate school, you must pass three exams: a foreign language, philosophy and history of science, a specialized subject in a specialty. Full-time postgraduate study lasts 3 years, in correspondence - 4 years. In the full-time budget post-graduate course, the post-graduate student receives a scholarship (total for the year 13 = 12 regular + one subsidy “for books”). During the course, the graduate student does several basic things:
- prepares its independent scientific research (dissertation) for the degree of candidate of sciences;
- fulfills compulsory teaching practice (paid);
- works with a supervisor, sources, a leading organization, etc., writes reports on special forms;
- speaks at conferences and symposia;
- collects VAK publications in special accredited magazines;
- passes three candidate exams (the same as for admission, only with a higher level of theoretical training and scientific knowledge + translation of scientific literature).
At the end of the graduate school (including early or extended under certain circumstances), the graduate student defends (or does not defend) his dissertation and after some time receives the coveted certificate of a candidate of science, and when he reaches the necessary success in teaching and developing teaching aids, he also holds the title of assistant professor .
Really boring? And it even smells a bit old books, library cloth and glue custom envelopes. But everything changes when it comes - the army! From the shelter of those who work, graduate school becomes the subject of fierce competition from guys who do not want to serve. At the same time, they definitely need full-time postgraduate study, and there are treacherously few places in any department. If you add a little doom, corruption, sympathy from the commission, then the chances melt away ...
In fact, there are some tips for entering graduate school for any purpose.
- Get ready in advance, the sooner the better. Write articles in student scientific collections, participate in NIRS contests, speak at conferences, etc. You should be visible in the scientific community of the university.
- Choose a department, a specialty, and a narrow topic for you to develop it in a term paper, NIRS, diploma, and then in a dissertation. The fact is that it is important for a university, department, and your supervisor that there are effective defenses, and a student with such a serious approach is practically the guarantor of another successful defense, and all else being equal, they will choose you. This is directly the main, very significant factor - believe it or not, but it is more weighty than money and ties.
- Do not delay preparing for the entrance exams - they will overtake you almost immediately after the diploma, and this is very inappropriate. Although passing them is quite simple: the commission is familiar, the state is still fresh in your head, you can pass the foreign language that you know best (for example, I had French - and next to the “triple” crowd of “English” it was a jackpot. Moreover , from experience with graduate students I know that many, especially 2 years before admission, start to learn another language in order to gain an extra point).
Postgraduate study is about the same as in a university: periodic lectures (should be in-depth, but depends on the experience and conscience of the teacher), discussion of fragments of the dissertation with the supervisor, teaching, etc. Greatly takes time from work and personal life, but in principle tolerant, in comparison with a full-time university - in general, paradise.
We leave out the topic of writing a dissertation — these are three separate posts. One of my favorite articles on a subject is this on Habré .
Defending yourself or not is entirely your choice. Here are the pros and cons.
Pros:
- It is prestigious and says a lot about you as a person: perseverance, the ability to achieve goals, learning ability, analysis and synthesis skills. Employers appreciate this, repeatedly noticed.
- This provides benefits if you decide to engage in teaching activities in the future or in the present.
- The candidate of sciences is already a part of science, and if necessary, the scientific environment will be happy to accept you.
- This greatly enhances self-esteem and self-confidence as a professional.
Minuses:
- A dissertation is a long time; you will spend a lot of time on it.
- For a scientific degree, a salary bonus is applied only in universities and some state. companies and authorities. As a rule, candidates of science are admired in the commercial environment, but they do not monetize enthusiasm.
- Defense is a bureaucracy: you will have to interact with a practical leading organization (this may be your employer), with a scientific leading organization, with magazines, publications, opponents, and so on.
- Defending a dissertation is expensive. If you work in a university, you can achieve financial assistance and partially cover expenses, otherwise all expenses will be borne by you: from your trips, printing and postage expenses to tickets and gifts to your opponents. Well, a banquet. In 2010, I got about 250,000 rubles, but in the end, the dissertation was not finished and brought to the defense - the money in the business turned out to be more interesting, and the work was more serious (if that - I repent a little).
In general, the question of whether it is worth defending myself, from the height of experience I will answer this way: “If you have time, money and brains - yes, it’s worth it. Then everything will be lazier and lazier, although with practical experience it will be somewhat simpler. ”
Important: if you are defending precisely because you have something to say in science and there is no goal of rejecting, gaining a foothold in a university or receiving post-graduate scholarship, you can apply for - this form of postgraduate education is cheaper than paid graduate school, is not limited by tight deadlines and does not require entrance examinations.
▍ Second Higher Education
One of my employers said that not having two higher educations in our time is simply indecent. And the truth is, sooner or later it comes to us along with the need for a change in specialty, for career growth, for wages or simply out of boredom.
Let's define the terminology: the second higher education is education, as a result of which a new specialist is formed with certain theoretical knowledge and practical skills, and a diploma of state education is a certificate of it. That is, this is the classic way: from 3 to 6 courses, sessions, exams, state degrees and diploma defense.
Today, a second higher education can be obtained in several ways (depending on the specialty and university).
- After the first higher, enter and completely unlearn a new specialty in the full-time, correspondence, evening or full-time courses. Most often, this choice occurs with a cardinal change of specialty: he was an economist, he decided to become a foreman; she was a doctor; she was educated as a lawyer; was a geologist, became a biologist.
- To study at evening or correspondence in parallel with the first higher education. Many universities now provide such an opportunity after the first year and even provide preferential admission with an average score higher than the standard established by the university. You study in the main specialty and at the same time receive a diploma of a lawyer, economist, etc., most often a translator. Honestly, this is not very stressful - as a rule, sessions do not overlap, but there is less time for rest.
- After the second higher education, study in an abbreviated program (3 years) in a related specialty or in another specialty with the completion of some exams (as agreed with the university).
It is easiest to get a second education in your own university: familiar teachers, easy recounting of subjects, often convenient payment by installment mechanisms, common infrastructure, familiar atmosphere, your own classmates as part of a group (usually there are several such students per stream). But it is precisely the training at your university that turns out to be the most ineffective in terms of the growth of knowledge and skills, because it happens by inertia and more for the sake of "everyone ran, and I ran."
However, the motives are different, and it is worth considering what drives the applicants to the second higher and how the quality of their training is connected with this, how much the expended forces and nerves pay off.
- Master the adjacent specialty. In this case, you expand your professional horizon, become more universal and you have more career prospects (for example, economist + lawyer, programmer + manager, translator + PR specialist). Learning is quite simple, the intersection of disciplines is delayed in the head. Such an education quickly pays off due to the demand for additional skills.
- To master a new specialty "for yourself." Perhaps something did not work out with your first education and, having earned money, you decided to make your dream come true - to graduate from the university that you really want. This is even a little manic state: to prepare for exams, to enter, and now an adult to go to lectures again, taking studies 100% seriously. Such studies have no purpose other than fulfilling a desire, and can often go sideways: for example, you will have to compete with young graduates in the labor market, grow your career again, get a starting salary, etc. And also, most likely, you cannot withstand the load and either quit or lose an important part of life (most often personal). Learning without a goal is very bad. It’s better to buy great books on the subject and study for fun.
- Master a new specialty for work. Everything is obvious here: you know what you are studying for and almost guaranteed to recoup costs (and sometimes the employer initially pays for the training). By the way, it was noticed: when it is work, and not obligatory studies, knowledge is given unmatched faster and more efficiently. Good, proper material motivation makes the brain work :-)
- Learn a foreign language. But this is not at the address. Either you go to foreign language and study full-time from bell to bell, or it is better to find other ways to learn the language, if only because at the second higher level you will have such subjects as linguistics, a general theory of linguistics, stylistics, etc. In the evening and evening-correspondence courses it is a completely useless load.
The most dangerous thing in the process of obtaining a second higher education is to allow yourself to study like on the first: to skip, cram on the last night, ignore self-training, etc. Still, this is the formation of a conscious person for quite rational goals. The investment must be effective.
▍ Further education
Unlike the second higher, this is a shorter-term education aimed at increasing competencies or gaining a new specialty within the existing one. When you receive additional education, in most cases you will not come across a general educational blog of disciplines (and you will not pay for them), and information at lectures and seminars is more concentrated. The teachers are different, it’s just as lucky: they can be the same university ones, but they can be real practitioners who know which side to present the theory to make it useful to you.
There are two forms of continuing education.
Refresher courses (trainings, seminars here) - the shortest type of continuing education, from 16 hours. The task of the courses is as simple as possible - to expand knowledge in some narrow issue so that the student can come to the office and put them into practice. For example, CRM training will help a salesperson sell more efficiently, and a prototyping course will help an office analyst or project manager make advanced prototypes for colleagues, rather than draw on the whiteboard.
As a rule, this is a good way to get the maximum information squeezed out of hundreds of books and resources for you, to pump skill, to sort out the existing knowledge on shelves. Only before training, be sure to read the reviews and avoid too hyped and annoying trainers and institutions (we will not call, we think you yourself know these companies).
By the way, continuing education courses are one of the non-standard forms of team building, combining communication, a new environment and benefits. Much better than bowling or drinking together.
Professional retraining - long-term training of 250 hours, during which the specialty is deepened significantly or its vector changes. For example, the Python Long Course is a professional retraining course for a programmer, and the Software Development course is for an engineer.
As a rule, an introductory interview is handed in for a retraining course to identify the level of training and primary skills of a specialist, but it happens that everyone is enrolled (after 2-3 lessons, the extra ones will drop out anyway). The rest of the study is very similar to the senior courses of the university: specialization, exams, control and often final work and its defense. Students of such courses are motivated, ready-made practices, it is interesting to learn and communicate, the atmosphere is democratic, the teacher is available for questions and discussions. If there are problems, they can always be solved with a course practitioner - nevertheless, this is an education for your money, often considerable.
By the way, experience shows that in most universities the most unsuccessful course of professional retraining is English. The fact is that it is conducted by university teachers, they are cool about the matter, and in fact you just do the exercises from the textbook and workbook. In this regard, a well-chosen language school with the practice of live communication is not an example better, but dear FDPO of Russian universities will forgive me.
Further education is a great way to solve problems with missing skills, try something new, try to change jobs, or just believe in yourself. But again, read reviews, choose state universities, and not the various "universities of all Russia and the Universe."
Outside of this article, there were several more types of additional education that are not classified as “classical”: corporate university training, language schools (offline), programming schools (offline), online education — anything. We will definitely return to them in parts 4 and 5, as they are already more associated with work than with the basic higher education of a specialist.
In general, learning is always useful, but I urge you to be selective and clearly understand what kind of motive drives you, is it worth it to spend time and money solely for the sake of extra paper or the realization of internal ambitions.
Tell us in the comments how many higher and additional education you have, do you have a scientific degree, which experience was successful and which is not very?
▍Ancient postscript
And if you have already grown up and you are missing something for development, for example, a good powerful VPS , go to the RUVDS website - we have a lot of interesting things.
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