The OU thread got me thinking.

I come from a family where everybody, parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, any connection you can think of have never been to university. It is just not something that seems to register on our radar. We all seem to have been gainfully employed in our lives and got on in our respective careers. Doesn’t seem to have held anyone back.

I know of other family’s where it seems everybody has been to university.

So the question is i guess, do you think a person’s family culture influences their outlook and expectations more than they probably consciously admit. Sure we all have an individual choice but i kind of think a subconscious level of influence is going on.

IMO Yes, no one in my family went to Uni. I only went because the armed forces careers advisor told me to if I could, and then a couple of good friends got offered places, so I thought why not.

My wife is now studying for a degree with the OU and my daughter wants to be a vet, she’s only 7 but now knows she’ll need to get a degree to become one; I’m already saving…

I was the first person in our family to go to university. To be honest, I don’t think anyone gave a shit and, looking back, I could easily have done without it.

There did seem to be the assumption good gcse = a-levels = degree = good job which I proved to be complete bollocks.

I had two cousins go to university (well, polytechnic + university). But, not being close to them, this had no influence on me. Instead, though my parents had never been – and not been especially held back – they put me into a school system that assumed anyone but the most idiotic would go.

When I told my parents I intended to take a year out after A Levels, it took some effort to convince them that I would still get there (through the normal place deferral).

Their expectations were built on their own sense of missing out in their day. That carried through to their enthusiasm for my subsequent career choice (lawyer), as they are of a generation where being a qualified professional is seen as a mark of distinction and a path to financial success. Anyone who is a lawyer will tell you that’s far from the truth.

Since I’m on this route of catharsis: being the eldest child has led me to want to do right by their expectations, whereas my younger sister doesn’t seem to have felt the same weight of expectation. Hence taking so long to choose my own path.

Dr North feels much the same – perhaps more so, as her parents were part of the university expansion in the late 60s (themselves being the first in their respective families to go).

Well, you did ask!

I think it does — but seen from the opposite view, as both my folks went to university (back in the 40s..) and I did as well. Son is into second year and daughter hopes to go to art college and on to further study after that – so yes I think it is an influence. See also school groups – most of my close school friends went to university or at least further education (not all stuck it out) and there was even then, back in the 70s / 80s that it would be a strong option. Wife did get a degree and then returned after that.

Wider family – not so sure, we’re not a big close family group but of my cousins for example there are – as far as I can tell – a lot of degree qualified and above folk (I know of at least three cousins or second cousins, from same family, one is a surgeon I think, one is a paediatrician I think and the last qualified as PhD in Chemistry, did research and then restarted and retrained as a GP – so I guess a full Dr Dr..)

I went straight from school. It got me a well paying job – but not a job I enjoy.

My job with degree means behind desk doing maths an logistics.

My job without degree would have been making and building shit and I probably would have went to uni as a mature student with a life experience that meant j knew why I was there.

As it was I went because people told me I should and I didn’t know what else I wanted to do…..

There will be no expectation from me for j kids to go to uni so long as they are doing something constructive with their life I’ll be happy. They might not be rich but so long as they are contributing and not a drain. The world still needs carpenters brickies and mechanics

So the question is i guess, do you think a person’s family culture influences their outlook and expectations more than they probably consciously admit. Sure we all have an individual choice but i kind of think a subconscious level of influence is going on.

Perhaps before asking this, you should have reread your Bourdieu

I went to uni because I could really. My Dad has a PhD and whilst my mum has no more than o-levels, education is highly valued in my family so it just seemed like the normal state of affairs – GCSE, A-levels, Uni. All very middle-class expectation…

The days of uni being a middle-class privilege is over IMO – without a degree it’s getting increasingly hard to get a decent job. Partly, companies have adapted the work they offer to take advantage of the sheer numbers of graduates they’re being supplied with, and partly the old blue collar jobs are either being off-shored or replaced by automation (rather than being taken by immigrants). Hence Brexit as a protest vote by lower-paid workers – they’re screwed.

The research I’ve been reading (I work in Higher Education) suggests we’ll all need advanced analytical skills (information as well as data) and advanced soft-skills to be of value in the workplace – as the nature of work moves massively into knowledge work. This is making a degree more and more essential to get any kind of well-paid job and with the high cost of housing you’ve basically no chance of a decent standard of living without a well-paid job…

A guy I ride with who’s a car mechanic said it’s increasingly essential to be a software engineer in order to be a car mechanic – he hardly ever actually gets his hands dirty messing around with the mechanical parts of the car – lots of plugging in diagnostic software… he said he needs to retrain about twice a year to keep up with the new software releases it’s changing so fast.

That said, some people just aren’t that academic (my brother for e.g.) so the government is developing apprenticeships as an alternative for those jobs e.g. engineering, where practical skills are still important. They have the benefit of getting work experience and earnings whilst learning – making the apprentice more employable at an earlier age than a graduate, as well as a whole lot less debt…

my daughter wants to be a vet, she’s only 7 but now knows she’ll need to get a degree to become one; I’m already saving…

Early days yet but apprenticeships should be well-advanced by the time she needs to be making a decision. I’m not a subject-matter expert on specific jobs but I’d be surprised if apprencticeships don’t develop for veterinary work

The world still needs carpenters brickies and mechanics

Yes, but what skills do these jobs need? Look at my comment above about mechanics needing to be software engineers – that was from a guy at Jaguar Landrover.

Brickies – look at the stories coming through about an increase in the use of modern prefabs to try and resolve the housing crisis – the nature of all these kinds of work is changing fast…

So the question is i guess, do you think a person’s family culture influences their outlook and expectations more than they probably consciously admit.

Yes massively. Its the subconscious bits that are so big and so hard to see. I have 3 graduate grandparents which must be reasonable unusual for some one in their 50s. I followed the herd but no regrets

I was the first person in my family to go to Uni (and so was my wife) and there wasn’t too much expectation of either my comprehensive school or family of people going to uni. I have lots of qualifications and could never have done what I have without going to Uni. The sad part is the loss of the (largely) free Uni education that allowed me and the Mrs to go to Uni. If uni education was as expensive as it is now we might well have neither gone.

Brooess

It’s a skill in its self but there’s no reason it can’t remain vocational.

Not everything can be learnt in a classroom.

(I have a mech eng degree and time spent doing practical shit was limited and it shows when you see some of my peers wielding a spanner- I learnt more about what I do in engineering working in the bike shop learning from the boss who was a motorman and foundry worker prior to a bike shop)

Hmm.. Not sure.

My parents both left school as soon as they could, my mum had a city and guilds in flower arranging, my dad didn’t take any exams. Both worked hard and did the usual stuff. House, kids, car etc.

My dad had a real work ethic, worked his way up in through the industry he joined and eventually started his own business. There were no expectations on us as kids, just to work hard. No one in the extended family went to university.

My brother got a place a Cambridge, and a sponsorship from BAE. He stayed on and also did his PhD there. I went to Newcastle Uni and started a PhD before dropping out as I was offered a job.

The first, and so far only, two of my family to go to uni, although I would say the majority of my school friends went. For me it wasn’t family expectations, but more what my contemporaries were doing I guess.

My parents left school as soon as they could, 20 years after I went I’m still the first out of my extended family to have gone. My parents didn’t disuade me from going but I didn’t even think it was an option as I didn’t know anyone who had done it. My friends family’s were more clued up and that gave me the push.
Got a 1st in the end and it was some of the best few years if my life, life experience I would have never gained living in a small Norfolk town.
Having said that uni is not right for everyone or every career path.

My father was the middle one of 9 kids, son of a seaman in the north east born just before the war. He was bright enough for grammar school but they couldn’t get a bursary. Most of his brothers went down the pits or into the ship yards. He was the only one likely to make it to uni, and never got the chance.

Likewise my mum’s family had had no one go to uni.

I felt under tremendous pressure to realise their dreams and go. When I left school I got a place at Oxford *cough* Polytechnic *cough*, and knew instantly it wasn’t for me – wrong course, wrong place, wrong time. I quit in the first month, got a job, turned into a career, did professional qualifications instead. When I got made redundant from that, I did a part time degree while working just to prove to myself I could do it.

MrsMC was from a similar non-uni background and got herself a degree after school that has led to a career – just done her Masters in fact.

I guess our generation was the first where aspirational working class families hoped/expected brighter kids to go to uni rather than “get a trade”.

Looking at our kids now, no idea. Can’t see the point of a degree for the sake of a degree, given the debt involved. Unless they need a degree – one wants to be a teacher – we’re quite happy for them to just get jobs or apprenticeships. I’ve worked with some cracking young people in recent years who have gone through apprenticeships and flourished.

I come from a very working class background my parents aspiration for me was get a trade, so back in 1979 I got an apprenticeship. By my mid 20s I realised I was not going to get off the tools if I didn’t get a degree so HNC HND Degree it took nine years of day release to get their and within weeks of achieving it is was offered a job for a US company on 3x my Maintenance Fitters salary. All my kids have gone or are going to Uni doing useful degrees (Business Product Design) and the two eldest both have very well paid proper jobs in their disciplines. I am 100% that neither of them would have got there without the degree as they are pre requisites for the jobs. If you come from a poor unconnected background then all you can do is educate yourself (usefully) Uni can also broaden their horizons and contacts

I was first person in my family to go to Uni, all my 3 kids have done so and my ex-wife did a degree as a mature student after kids where at secondary school. My father left school to be an apprentice and my mum left school at 16 and was married at 17. My grandparents where similar, with one killed in ww2 at 20. Different era then.

I do think the dynamics are changing, there are plenty of degrees now I don’t think are worth doing for the £50k of debt they will require. What is also true is that academic and personal skills will be increasingly required to have a chance of a decent job in an increasingly competitive world.

Whilst a degree for the sake of it is no way to go, and a degree is not for everyone, I’d be very careful assuming that that jobs which currently do not require a degree will stay that way in the future…

The nature of the economy is changing and the nature of work is changing – it’s splitting into relatively well-paid knowledge jobs or poorly paid low-skilled jobs with little middle ground for the unqualified…

Look what’s happening in the bike trade – you need to be able to run a warehouse, website, logistics and digital marketing operation rather than a shop. If you don’t have the technical know-how to set up, maintain, and update a website (incl mobile site and/or app) and manage stock levels to a very high standard (look at the critcisms that fly on this website about ‘unsatisfactory’ service… then do you have a business anymore?

Worth taking a look at this doc…(or at least bits of it…)

Working Futures – government research

From pg 13

Focussing on the other key measure of skills used in Working Futures, the supply of people holding higher level qualifications such as degrees is projected to grow steadily to 2024, despite the rising costs of attending university. The proportion of the labour force remaining unqualified is expected to represent only a small minority by 2024.

Measuring the demand for formal qualifications is more difficult. The number of jobs in occupations typically requiring a high level qualification is expected to continue to grow, albeit more slowly than over the previous decade.

It is projected that the supply of high qualified people will grow more quickly than demand for such qualifications, as implied by projections of the patterns of employment by qualification level within industries and occupations. This results in be an increase in qualification intensity within most occupations, especially those that have not previously employed many people with higher level qualifications. This is where there is more scope for increase (rather than in those occupations in which the workforce is
already highly qualified, such as professionals).

This does not necessarily indicate an of excess supply of such qualifications. The nature of jobs may be changing to make higher qualifications a necessary requirement for those jobs.

IMO if a degree isn’t right for you then get an apprenticeship… but don’t assume that decent jobs will be available without any kind of advanced qualification

What is also true is that academic and personal skills will be increasingly required to have a chance of a decent job in an increasingly competitive world.

The Erasumus scheme is very helpful in this respect of course.

😳

😀

would I have more money if I didn’t go uni? Yes, at least for now.

would I have travelled the world with my job and be able to work anywhere? probably not.

would I be scared of immigrants rather than scared of racists? hopefully not!

Yes so you agree vocational studies are just as valuable as degrees then.

Different strokes and many folks will go on to get a degree at a later date once they see a need.

Just do it….

Yes so you agree vocational studies are just as valuable as degrees then.

Absolutely. Apprenticeships are being introduced because the government recognise there’s a need for them for industry. But Working Futures is saying you need something to an advanced level – if not a degree then an Apprenticeship, but nothing more than GCSE is increasingly not an option to a decent job. Even basic jobs in retail are disappearing as everything goes online

Different strokes and many folks will go on to get a degree at a later date once they see a need.

Not necessarily – if you read Working Futures it’s suggesting you need the higher qualifications to even get into the decent jobs from the beginning…

If I was advising kids now I’d be encouraging a degree if the desired job required it, or an Apprenticeship if the desired job required it. But I’d really not advise doing nothing… the nature of work is changing fast…

The proportion of the labour force remaining unqualified is expected to represent only a small minority by 2024.

doesn’t help you understand I am saying do an apprenticeship. Vocational study is not a GCSE.

It’s an apprenticeship usually incorporating a hnc or hnd

Absolutely no where did I suggest leaving school and getting a job. That is a silly idea on all counts imo.

When I went to uni (first generation of my family to do so) it was because I had the chance to. This was some 18 years ago and I still got a grant for my first year but I would not have been able to progress at work without that piece of paper.

I have seen many apprentices with good still hit the glass ceiling despite being better than the new grads around them and people with 20 years experience being passed over because the HR book says they need a degree… One of the electrical technicians got a communications degree so he could become an “engineer”.

Hopefully the expectations from companies change. I am not sure how quickly this might happen due to the resistance of people already employed to open up their roles to extra competition..