dovaeu

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all in continued good health and well-being.

I would kindly like to ask for advice regarding my plans to move to Australia for a Psychology Master degree in 2023. I'm currently working towards a BSc (Honours) in Psychology with Counselling from the Open University in the UK, and am uncertain how likely it is this will be accepted by the Australian Psychological Society (APS) to be comparable to the typical 4-year Australian Psych undergraduate degrees. These 4-year accredited courses are required if one wants to get into an accredited Master degree, which, in turn, is essential for professional recognition later on. Searching through this forum and elsewhere, I found a number of people who went through similar processes but quite a long time ago. Things are likely to have changed in the last 10-15 years, and hence I'm reposting the question. In the past, it seems the APS has, on some occasions, accepted 3-year UK BPS accredited courses as equivalent to 4-year Australian APAC accredited ones, and I'm hoping that will still be the case. Does anyone here have any experience with this transition and be willing to chat about it?

Thanks a lot in advance and kind regards :-)

quoll

Only way you are going to know for sure is to contact APS and ask them. I was in the vanguard of fighting for (hons) equivalence with AHPRA and they agreed that it was, once APS said it was. But that was a long time ago and, as you say, things have probably changed since then and different universities may be considered differently - I dont know what the status of OU would be and that may depend on course components, practical work, supervision etc. Why would you want to be doing a Masters in Australia - it'd be much cheaper to do it in UK and if you had a UK Masters or PhD you'd be OK with AHPRA (unless, of course you are an Australian citizen in which case you would get Commonwealth fee rates not international student rates with accompanying work conditions on the student visa)

dovaeu

Hi Quoll,

Thanks for your response!

You're right about UK degrees being much cheaper, but I'm afraid I don't live in the UK and have always dreamt of going back to Australia after living there for 6 months some time ago. Going to the UK would be an option, but one of the reasons my wife and I are hoping to make it Down Under is the climate. Living in Belgium atm, we're trying to go somewhere sunny before returning home in the long term. Educationally, the UK would be a great option, but it's just not in the cards right now.

In any case, thanks for your input and all the best!