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Sorry for being late -- I mostly lurk the forums these days. I have an M.A. in planning and an undergrad degree in creative writing. There are very few bachelor programs in planning and AFAIK a lot of them are just accelerated master's programs (or that is sort of the expected end goal). I would definitely do your undergrad in something else, take some master's level planning courses if you can, and then you can always go to grad school if you decide you really want to be a planner. But in the meantime you will have a good fallback, and if you want to do something that's not exactly planning the other degree will be more helpful. Planning is weird as a discipline because it is a lot of different skills and knowledge -- communication, writing, geography, history, economics, sociology among others. Which is why I like it, but makes it kind of weird to go to school for. I honestly knew a lot of what we covered in school already just from my personal interests, and many of my classmates had already worked in similar jobs, but needed to get the degree. It was helpful for me to make connections and get a lot of practical work experience, but I didn't really learn loads of stuff. Which I guess is like a lot of degrees. I work now for a government agency in transportation. I had to piece together a bunch of temp work for a year + before getting a permanent job so I wouldn't say the job market is great. A lot of it goes with the public sector and my state elected a new governor who put in a state hiring freeze just when I was looking for work, so I may have had better luck if I lived elsewhere. But I like my job now. One thing not really mentioned was that you usually get to focus on some aspect of planning in grad school: land use, law, transportation, community development, etc. So that helps you get a job in that specific area. I wouldn't say the post above about the "fun parts" of planning being done by people with other degrees is entirely accurate. Any other questions, let me know.
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Feb 21, 2016 15:34
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 21:06 |
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