Continuing education in science and technology: A survey of part-time postgraduate students and their employers

ABSTRACT

In 1980, the Science and Engineering Research Council initiated a three-year pilot scheme which gave some financial support to a number of part-time postgraduate students, in full-time employment, taking taught Master's courses in various fields of science and technology at ten selected institutions. The Polytechnic of Central London was commissioned to monitor the scheme.

This paper presents some descriptive statistics about these part-time postgraduate students in science and technology, including their age distribution and patterns of previous study, their occupations, their access to financial and other forms of support during their period of study and the distance they travelled to attend the course which met their needs.

In their second year, students were asked to complete a questionnaire which sought more detailed information about their jobs and level of seniority or responsibility within their organisation and the relationship as they saw it between their course of study and their work and longer term plans. Questions were also asked about the costs and benefits, as they perceived them, of taking a part-time Master's course at that stage in their career.

The resulting picture illustrates the nature of the relationship between employment and the effective demand for part-time postgraduate study in technological subjects. Another result which emerges is that the students taking such courses are highly work-oriented and, moreover, that they do not always view the returns to postgraduate education in financial terms.

Information supplied by course tutors and employers was linked with that obtained from students to provide a more rounded account of student progress than can usually be ascertained from a simple statement of completion and wastage rates.

Employers' reports were received after successful completion of the first year of the course (for those students still with the same employer) and a follow-up questionnaire was sent out after the second year to the employers of students who successfully completed their course (or the second year of longer courses). Employers' response was good and showed a remarkable degree of cooperation with the research project. Their answers to some fairly detailed openended questions showed these employers to be strongly in favour of the part-time mode, for postgraduate study. They emphasised the value of combining study with work and the beneficial effect of this arrangement on graduates' adaptation to working life.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the costs and financing of part-time postgraduate study, from the perspectives of the student, the employer and the educational institution.