A look into the future

Yesterday I was looking on various sites for Buckinghamshire agencies for a part time PR internship either for summer 2013 or to run alongside my course currently. As I started looking obviously a lot of the jobs that came up were also graduate jobs, so just out of curiosity I looked through the descriptions and was amazed to see how many internships wanted someone who had a place on a Master's degree or further qualification course place confirmed... I remember a speaker that came to see us, Roger Hayes, who mentioned to us that looking into Master's degree or something similar would benefit us greatly. However, a lot of other speakers have said it doesn't make much difference if you have a Master's degree. So which is it?

Now I've heard a lot of different things about Master's degrees. That it's free if you get a first in your undergraduate course, you don't get student finance funding for it otherwise and it can cost you ridiculous amounts of money and that your fees have to be paid in full before the course... surely this can't be right? So, I went to investigate...

I do know for a fact that some companies will send their executives on Master's degrees as a day release set up, but this tends to be only the bigger companies or those that can afford it. According to the Direct Gov website you can get funding for a Masters degree but it's not widely available to anyone. I couldn't find much information about whether if you get a first in your undergraduate degree you get to do a Master's for free, but I did find out that funding is generally only available if you're doing a subject such as Law or Medicine though there are some exceptions but nothing about Marketing or Business. I think this information should be more readily available to students- life choices don't stop when you get to university. There is so much information about which university and which course to apply for or other options after school but it generally stops there. I think a lot of people are misinformed about post graduate study, myself for one and even looking online didn't help too much, in fact I think it confused me even more!

I've always considered post graduate study but I'm not too sure due to circumstances such as funding. It would be great if I got into a job that was willing to send me on a post graduate course but sadly due to the current economy that option also isn't too widely available. Nonetheless, I'm at university now and the wise thing to do would be to make the most of what I have!

If anyone has info on post-grad study, please comment! I'd love to have my facts straight on this topic!