I'm in my 50s and graduated from university over thirty years ago. I now have the option to do some study and have been very focused on a subject. I have read widely from academic reading lists on the subject, taken a lot of notes and have written some longer pieces. I'm now interested in doing a masters degree in the subject.
I meet the entry requirements, legal status etc of the masters I would like to do, but it's quite competitive to get into and they need two academic referees. I don't know how to do this.
One option would be to do a diploma in the subject (which is different from my undergraduate degree) just to get academic referees, but that's a very slow and expensive way to achieve this. Please, are there other ways? Shorter courses? Other projects?