Deciding on where and if to study!?

At 24 I was supporting a wife and son... I'd look for jobs, although in the current economic climate I can see the attraction of being a perpetual student.
there comes a point where prospective employers will think..
'blimey this bloke is nearly 30 and never held down a job/got any experience'
I know that I'd be thinking that if I was reading CVs.

I see little realationship between Electronics and electrical engineering. Decide, do you want to play with high voltages and power stuff? or electronics which will takeyou towards microcontrollers and programming as well as electronics?
(You must realise Southampton has a pants football team).

Del _{(Pompey til I die)}

Thanks for the advice, surely a 4 year Engineering apprenticeship and the other 4 years since school I spent working at JCB shows both that I can hold down a Job and have atleast some experience?

Im spoilt in my current job in that one day I will be working with 11kv motors and the next on instrumentation. I do want to get out of the environment though and more onto the design side of things than getting down and dirty all the time! Thats why I would like to get a broad overview by doing Electrical and Electronic I guess.

Well you have definately given me something to think about.

Danny.

It sounds like a fair chunk of stuff has been accrued already. If one is holding 4 offers for a Masters' then there's a bit of a brain-box there, and some employers really want this stuff. Wow!

As above, it is all a matter of preference. 33 years ago, Exeter had the right "feel", and it still does even though the Engineering school there closed several years ago.

There is a >33-year-old old joke about Southampton:

• "If you laid all the girls at Southampton University in a line across the campus from head to toe, no-one would be surprised"

Try some right-brain thinking (Engineers aren't too good at this, generally): what would it FEEL like at each of the above places? Remeber that Uni is as much about one's interface with one's contemporaries as the course one is studying. So which one is best?