Full time or part time?

So what's the best way to study? Full-time or part-time?

As is so often the case, the answer is "it depends..."

With most universities there's either a single option or a binary choice. One option is to study full-time, taking modules equivalent to 120 credits in a single academic year with most Bachelor's degrees taking three years. The other option, if available, is to study at half this speed, taking modules equivalent to 60 credits in a single year, with most part-time degrees taking six years.

(There is some variation from this. Most notably Birkbeck, University of London, has a part-time model of 90 credits a year, so part-time degrees there take only four years.)

But the Open University is even more flexible than this. Students are able to study at whatever rate they like and even interrupt their studies, subject to an absolute time limit of normally sixteen years to complete a standard Bachelor's degree. Law is a more complicated case because there are tighter time limits for completion if the degree is to be used to qualify as a legal professional. There are also shorter limits when degrees are due to be withdrawn and a student has to complete whilst the modules are still available or find a way to transfer their credit onto another programme.

So one can study 120, 90, 60 or even just 30 credits in a single year, as well as taking years out if other factors intervene. It's a very flexible structure that puts the student first.

(Things are a bit more complicated at the postgraduate level. A Master's degree consists of 180 credits and in a full-time university programme it is taken over a whole calendar twelve months, including the summer holidays. But at the OU it is very difficult to take a whole Master's in a single year and sometimes difficult to take it in even two years, not least because many modules can only be started after a previous module has been completed and they each run year long. The new Master of Laws (LLM) degree is currently only available over three years. It is expected that in later years it will be possible to take the first two 60 credit modules simultaneously; however both will still have to be completed before doing the dissertation module in the following year.)

But despite the flexibility, on the Law Bachelor's degrees the most common patterns amongst the students I'm in contact with are either full-time (120 credits a year) or traditional part-time (60 credits a year) though there are exceptions. Full-time can be intense but if you have the actual hours available, the time management skills and the dedication that are all needed for an OU degree then it's perfectly possible to study full-time. In general the modules last half the year so it's only in an awkward six-week overlap period that the workload truly piles up and staff on modules that start around February are perfectly aware and understanding that students are wrapping up their outgoing course. Things are slightly different on Level 1 where the Law modules are 60 credits each and have a longer overlap period but with only two many have successfully balanced them in a single year.

Of course not everyone has the time to take so many modules all at once and that's perfectly fine. And one can vary the rate, especially when you move up between levels so you're not locked into a particular pace for good.

Related to this, legally all Open University students are classified as part-time regardless of how many credits or hours a student does (or is supposed to do). However, there is a limit on overall fees in a year that full-time students can hit (at least in England, the different fee structures across the UK are a regular source of confusion). So there are some financial benefits from going full-time but not all compared to attending a "bricks and mortar" university (though equally accommodation and/or transport costs are fewer).

So ultimately the choice is down to the individual student.

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