The past decade has seen the increase in more and more undergraduate university students looking at continuing their education after graduation, or after a few years working in the professional marketplace.

"If you are in an existing career path, further education can open the way to promotion. If you wish to change careers, it can show you have the knowledge for the new career, along with arguing that your existing skills are largely transferable into the new situation."

Such words by academic Michelle Sanson, professor of law at the University of Western Sydney, encapsulate what further education is about. This is unsurprising, as the benefits of further education are tantamount.

The purpose of continuing education is to maintain or sharpen the skills of the sort of vocation you have joined. Accredited courses such as Masters, and PhD examine new areas of the subject area, or review basic practice and principles and go in-depth on certain areas, many times in a new direction.

The popularity of further education can be traced back to primarily three factors; mode of delivery, the diverse choices of qualifications available and the need to stand out in the professional marketplace.

The below will examine the variety of further education options available to undergraduate legal graduates.

Graduate certificates and diplomas

Most universities offer graduate diploma courses. Generally these are courses which span one year but are most frequently studied over two or three years part-time. The graduate diplomas supplement and extend the participant's knowledge of law in a speciality. Graduate diplomas are available in a variety of subject areas ranging from law, communications, fashion design, public relations, engineering, and much more.

Some universities also offer graduate certificates of less than one academic year focusing on one particular sub-discipline.

Postgraduate courses

Most universities offer an active postgraduate program. Masters degrees, normally require a bachelors degree with Honours, plus one or two years full-time study involving a thesis or coursework or a combination of both.

Masters degrees by coursework usually permit the candidate to select a range of subjects over a number of topics. Most universities offer masters degrees in the chosen discipline by research; some also offer masters degrees by coursework or by a combination of coursework and research.

Another postgraduate research degree available is the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). These degrees normally require at least three years of full-time research culminating in the submission of a thesis. Depending on the topic investigated and the skills of the candidate, a candidate might be required to do some further study in research methods or in a related inter-disciplinary field before completing candidature for this qualification.

If you obtained a first class honours degree and you would like to become an academic then you can skip Masters and enrol directly into a PhD. That requires a 100,000 word thesis. If you decide to study full-time there are some scholarships available which are around $20,000 tax free per annum, allowing for part time work.

To do a PhD, it is strongly recommended by universities that the candidate pick a topic that they are passionate about. Ms Sanson agrees, "When you have worked on a document for years, and you are leading up to submission, you have a big task in editing and finalising everything, and it is the passion that keeps you going."

Ms Sanson further offers some advice when thinking about postgraduates studies:

"I recommend they(students) forget about postgraduate studies until they have graduated from their undergraduate degree - otherwise it would be like a marathon runner seeing their next run right after finishing their first one. It is better to focus on the finishing line! Then when you have had a break from studying and given some thought to what you would like to do, you can get cracking on postgraduate education." "It isn't a bad idea to at least have a think about what you want do for postgraduate studies if that's a path you see yourself taking, especially if you find much passion in an area of study, after a few years of university."

Ms Sanson cautions however "Choose the course carefully. With Masters, there is a Masters by coursework or a research Masters. Which one you choose will depend on what you want to use the postgraduate qualification for. For example if you want to study eight different subjects, to learn more sub-topics in your area of study, then a coursework degree would be appropriate, but if you have one area that you want to research on, then a research degree would be better. Both come out with a Masters degree, but they have different purposes."