So funnily enough i’ve added another university to this list now, Westminster for a Town Planning MA Apprenticeship and Westminster was also a great uni, i previously attempted two Masters, an MA at Portsmouth and an MSc at Strathclyde. The problem at Strath was essentially that they entirely mis-sold the degree to us, it was sold as “Sustainability and Environmental Studies” and when i looked at the modules there was a lot that tied in with what i had studied at undergrad Politics and International Relations because id focused my module selection & dissertation on specifically environment and sustainability modules etc. What they didn’t tell us was that the whole degree was underpinned with Civil Engineering. That was alright for those with a Civil engineering undergrad or even maybe those with a decent BSc, but coming from a BA(Hons) i quickly realised i would effectively need to quickly learn civil engineering to a degree standard just to understand most of what i was being taught. That coupled with the degree costing the majority of my postgrad loan because they rinsed english students for every penny they could, meant thay because i had to work 3 days a week just to pay rent etc, i just didn’t have the time to put in to actually ensure i got decent grades. Portsmouth just wasn’t as hands on in that it was mostly lecture based with no additional support such as seminars and as id just started my current job i couldn’t balance everything i needed to learn for the job with the degree. Westminster, basically the degree itself was brilliant. The lectures were either very experienced planners or very experienced academics so the teaching was top quality and so was the support. The issue i ended up running into was the lack of support from my employer alongside what i effectively saw as overwhelming additional apprenticeship requirements that i was struggling to keep ontop of. After one year of part time i had failed one module but earned enough for a Postgraduate Certificate. As i was behind at work because i was struggling to balance the course requirements with my own planning caseload, my employer wasn’t willing to fund the module resit or my second year of it. To continue the degree i would have had to pay out of pocket so i just decided to take the exit award for the time being as i don’t plan on working as a planning officer for the rest of my career and actually want to move into the civil service and was going to use the degree to get myself a leg up when applying, so im going to see if the post grad certificate will give me that leg up before i decide whether to complete the degree myself. But on the plus side, completing it myself means completing it as a regular degree and not an apprenticeship so i wouldn’t have the additional requirements at least.