Before I started my Master’s in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding, a friend of mine said, “Don’t bother with it. Just buy the books and read them.” He was partly right: you can learn the skills just from reading the books, and that would hugely reduce your costs and boost your ROI. If you check the books out of a library, your monetary investment would be zero. But here’s the problem. You wouldn’t get that piece of paper at the end that proves you read those books. Plus, what is the chance that, without the structure and deadlines of the degree, you’ll actually read all those
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