I’m a month into my postgraduate program right now, and a thought got to me - what if I could do all the things I was doing now without being enrolled as a student in the course?

The obvious result would be avoiding lectures, examinations, and the chance to work with similar minded people. But apart from that, it’s quite possible to obtain the postgraduate experience without ever paying a single cent.

Read, read, read

It’s a long shot, but it basically involves a lot of focussed, disciplined reading. What I would do (if I ever decided to go this route in the future) is to look at recommended reading lists for MSc programs published on university websites. Here are a few for Electronic Engineering courses offered at Queen Mary, University of London (quite a reputable university).

If there’s a course outline available, you could match your reading plan based on the recommended reading list with the course outline, and produce a reading schedule with specific reading goals. It’s a bit more focussed than, say, picking a general book on the subject.

In contrast, practitioners often claim that you seldom ever reuse school textbooks in the real world. That’s partly true because the head knowledge has been imprinted as guidelines that help practitioners make decisions about their work. So, it’s not that school textbooks are useless, but that they are meant to provide a sound basis for judgment and decision making (you don’t want to be reading textbooks to solve problems when a deadline is looming).

Try making your own exams

Some universities will publish course material online, even examinations. Some of this stuff can get quite rudimentary, but some of them will prove useful in defining thought-provoking and essential questions on a subject matter. Getting a real expert to vouch for this is a good way to gauge your learning, and to ‘test’ your progress.

In a sense, you could create your own exam, although that sounds quite circular (who would take an exam made by themselves?). But the point is not about scoring grades - it’s about getting to grips with the subject matter.

Besides, exams are only part of the postgraduate experience. The real test of a postgraduate is in academic writing, and the dissertation (thesis in the US) marks the focus of any Masters program.

Write a dissertation, sort of

In essence, a dissertation is an academic study of a topic. You have a claim (a hypothesis), you go out and study it (using a specific method, which you can define or quote), and you very carefully and methodically analyze and address for what it’s worth.

Dissertations can take up to three months or more, and often gets people outside their comfort zones into contextual environments to be able to study issues where “it all happens”. You could do things like interview people, observe how things are run at their specific locations (flight control, anyone?), or experiment on lab mice. Of course, you may lack the resources an academic instution has to offer, but then, it all depends on what you want to study.

Some universities make their dissertations publicly available, so that you can get a flavor of what it looks and feels like. There are tons of resources available to help students familiarize themselves with acedemic writing and research, so there’s no need to go to a university just to do that. Even professionals do it from time to time, and some companies make their living by publishing research findings.

The whole purpose of a dissertation is its learning value. Does it change the world? Does it offer help to problems that are evident? Is it a worthy, reliable source of information? Does it test the hypotheses well? Is the argument sound?

While you won’t get is a piece of paper that qualifies you as a MSc degree holder, you might earn the learning experience of the process. And it is useful in shaping your understanding and investigative skills. Maybe you might tell yourself it’s not worth the trip, and decide to blow your life savings on a real MSc program. But then, you might only want a part of the whole experience.

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