It is no secret that getting good qualifications requires a lot of time and energy. Therefore, it can be difficult to achieve qualifications when you barely have any time! This is especially the case if you want to complete a bachelor’s degree at university. After all, completing a degree takes a longer amount of time than A-Levels! If you find that you just don’t have the time for a full bachelor’s degree, a graduate certificate could potentially be the option for you.
A graduate certificate takes much less time to complete than a bachelor’s degree. On average, it can take between one third and two thirds of a full academic year. However, if completing a graduate certificate part time, it could take one full year to complete. It must be noted that these time frames may differ if you complete the qualification online.
If you want to find out more about graduate certificates and how long they really take to complete, check out the rest of this article!
Table of Contents
How long does a graduate certificate take to complete?
As already stated, a graduate certificate normally takes less than a year to complete if you study it full time. If you study part time, it will take a little longer to complete.
However, as a bachelor’s degree normally takes three years to complete, this is really not a lot of time at all. Therefore, if you want to gain a qualification at the same level as a bachelor’s degree in the quickest time possible, a graduate certificate may be the right qualification for you.
How long do online graduate certificates take to complete?
Similar to most qualifications nowadays, graduate certificates can be completed online. This means that there is more flexibility for how long it takes to complete this qualification.
The specific time it takes is specific to each course. However, as an example, this article from the University of London details the time frames of a graduate certificate in Computer Science.
This specific course is described as taking 10-12 hours a week to complete for six months! This is barely any time at all!
Due to the course being online, you are actually given up to five years to complete the course. This means that even if life events get in the way, there’ll still be time for you to complete it later on!
Online learning is also extremely flexible, as you can study from anywhere in the world. It is also possible to gain a bachelor’s degree via online learning. You can read about this in more detail if you check out this article from Think Student.
Why does a graduate certificate take a short amount of time to complete?
A graduate certificate is known as a Level 6 qualification. This means that it is a type of higher education. You can find out more about higher education if you check out this article from Think Student.
A bachelor’s degree is also a Level 6 qualification. You may be wondering why graduate certificates take so much less time to complete. The truth is that graduate certificates cover much less content than bachelor’s degrees.
They are also often very specific qualifications. As less learning takes place, less time is needed for it to be completed.
If you want to find out more about graduate certificates and how they compare to other qualification levels, check out this article from the University of Portsmouth.
Is the time it takes to complete a graduate certificate worth it?
You may be wondering what the point of a graduate certificate is. After all, this qualification has limited scope compared to a bachelor’s degree.
The truth is that many individuals who complete graduate certificates often already have a bachelor’s degree. They may just desire a career change and need a more specific set of qualifications to their chosen career.
As a result, the time it takes to complete a graduate certificate can definitely be seen as justifiable. Taking one year or less out of your life to gain a useful qualification specific to a certain job can definitely be seen as an investment.
This is also way more efficient than doing another bachelor’s degree! However, it must be noted that this does depend on each job. You may have to do another bachelor’s degree for certain jobs!