Time, cost and commitment

Two kinds of cost

A Level 8 diploma costs money and it costs time, and applicants tend to ask about the first and underestimate the second. This chapter takes them in reverse order, because in our experience of following up the people we have introduced, the learners who withdraw do so for want of hours rather than for want of funds, and the hours are the part you can plan for before you begin.

Reading the published hours

Every regulated qualification carries two published time values, and the difference between them is the key to planning.

Total qualification time, or TQT, is the awarding body's estimate of the hours a typical learner needs to achieve the whole qualification: everything from the first seminar to the last assignment, including reading, writing, fieldwork and assessment. Guided learning hours, or GLH, is the portion of that total spent under direct tuition or supervision: seminars, tutorials, supervised activity and feedback. The rest is your own time. Across the framework the convention is about ten hours of TQT per credit, so credit values are a quick guide to size.

The OTHM diploma's specification gives 1,800 hours of TQT and 900 GLH, so half of the total is scheduled contact and half is independent. The programme data behind this site does not carry TQT or GLH values for the Qualifi diploma; at 160 credits the convention would suggest something in the region of 1,600 hours, but you should confirm the published figure in the specification before planning around it.

Hours a week

Divide 1,800 hours by the duration and you have the weekly load, at least as an average.

Over twelve months it is about thirty-five hours a week, which is full-time study and which we do not recommend to anyone in a senior role. Over eighteen months it is about twenty-three, and this is the choice most of the learners we have introduced make. Over twenty-four months it is about seventeen, roughly two working evenings and most of a weekend day. London School of Planning and Management (LSPM), the approved centre, offers the programme over eighteen to twenty-four months and not, as far as we know, longer, which is sensible: the research units lose momentum when the design and the study are separated by too much time.

Those averages are misleading in one important way. The work does not arrive evenly. The research design unit is heavy with reading in its early months, when you are locating a problem and surveying a literature. Data collection for the capability unit compresses into a few intense weeks. Assignment deadlines cluster, because units run in parallel. A realistic plan has weeks of thirty hours and weeks of ten rather than a steady twenty-three, and a realistic learner protects the heavy weeks in the diary months in advance.

Where the hours come from

Senior leaders do not have spare hours; they have hours that are currently spent on something else. The learners who complete are usually the ones who decided in advance what would give way. The common patterns are two weekday evenings for seminars and tutorials, one weekend morning for reading, and a block of writing time, often early morning, several days a week. Some negotiate a study day a fortnight with their employer, particularly where the employer is sponsoring. A few take leave around assignment deadlines.

What does not work is fitting the study into whatever time is left over. At doctoral level the reading is dense and the writing needs sustained concentration; twenty minutes here and there produces neither. If you cannot see where roughly twenty hours a week would come from, the honest course is to wait until you can, and we will say so on the advice call.

The fee

Fees are LSPM's. It sets one fee for each diploma and quotes it in writing in its offer letter, and that written figure is the only one that binds anyone; nothing we say about fees is a quotation, and we take no payment. Until LSPM confirms the figures for the coming intake, this site says so rather than showing a number; the fee will appear on the fees page and on each programme page when it is confirmed, and LSPM's admissions team will put it in writing for you after the advice call if you ask.

What a Level 8 fee at an approved centre should cover is the whole of the qualification: registration with the awarding body and the certificate at the end, all scheduled seminars and tutorials for your chosen duration, individual supervision including the reading of drafts, first marking, moderation and external verification of every assignment, at least one resubmission per unit where needed, and access to the centre's learning resources. There are no examination fees because there are no examinations. Ask LSPM to confirm each of those items in its offer, and ask what it does not cover; expect the answer to be books you choose to buy, travel to any in-person seminar you opt to attend, and a small administrative charge for any second resubmission.

LSPM offers payment in full or by instalments across the programme; ask whether the total is the same either way. Nothing is payable until LSPM has made an offer and you have accepted it, and there is a fourteen-day cooling-off period after acceptance in which you may withdraw for a full refund. Nobody, including us, should ever ask you to pay anyone other than LSPM.

Employer sponsorship

A large share of Level 8 learners are sponsored in whole or part by their employers, and the qualification lends itself to it more than most. The research units require you to investigate a real strategic problem in a real organisation, and a sponsoring employer gets a rigorously researched answer to a question it cares about, together with a more capable senior leader. LSPM will invoice an employer directly and can provide a programme summary for internal approval; we are glad to send the specification and this guide to a learning and development contact and to talk them through the qualification, but the invoice and the sponsorship agreement are LSPM's.

Two cautions. Sponsorship agreements often attach conditions, such as remaining in post for a period after completion or repaying the fee on early departure; read yours carefully and take advice if the terms are onerous. And a sponsored learner sometimes finds that the organisation expects to steer the research towards its own priorities. That can be productive, but the research question must be one you can investigate with academic honesty, and your LSPM tutor will help you hold that line.

Comparing the cost with a doctorate

Applicants frequently ask how the fee compares with a DBA. The comparison is not straightforward, because the two are not the same size. A Level 8 diploma is 160 or 180 credits, taught over eighteen to twenty-four months, with no thesis supervision and no examination by viva. A DBA is several times larger, takes four to six years, and includes both. The diploma's fee reflects a smaller qualification, not a discounted doctorate.

If a university later grants advanced standing on the strength of the diploma, part of the doctorate's cost may be saved, and that saving is real. But it is the university's to grant, and you should not build it into your budget in advance. The previous chapter explains how to find out where a particular university stands before you commit.

The commitments that are harder to schedule

Hours and money can be planned. Some of what a Level 8 diploma asks for cannot, and it is worth knowing about it beforehand.

It asks you to be a novice again, in a room with people who may be junior to you at work, on a subject where your LSPM tutor knows more than you do. Some senior leaders find that genuinely uncomfortable for the first term. It asks you to have your writing criticised in detail and to revise it, repeatedly, which is a different experience from having reports approved. It asks you to sustain a single intellectual project for a year and a half through periods when work is demanding and the project feels pointless. And it asks you to be honest about your own organisation in writing, which can sit awkwardly with loyalty.

None of these is a reason not to do it. All of them are reasons to do it with your eyes open, and to make sure the people around you, at work and at home, know what you have taken on. The final chapter explains how to take the first step.