Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 86 total)
  • Most graduates in non-graduate jobs
  • mafiafish
    Free Member

    so I think, after careful consideration, although in principle I’d love anyone who wanted (and was able to benefit from it) to go on through college & university level education for free, the reality doesn’t appear to be quite working out

    I tend to agree, it would be great if we could have fewer people who are actually academically disposed going to do proper subjects and good universities for free – which is happening with PhD funding at the moment with the DTPs. But I’m not sure how you’d do that fairly.

    thestabiliser
    Free Member

    They’re not on the dole for 3/4 years, that’s the objective.

    igm
    Full Member

    And yet in engineering good quality graduates are like rocking horse poo.

    Well maybe not quite that rare, but not far off.

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    ahwiles
    Free Member

    because the pay is shite.

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    ^Exactly. Most people I know who did my course and simlar went into finance!

    irc
    Full Member

    MoreCashThanDash – Member

    Firstly, 50% going to uni as a target predates Blair.

    Really? Any source?

    leegee
    Full Member

    And yet in engineering good quality graduates are like rocking horse poo

    How would you rate the employ-ability prospects of a slightly older bloke with Foundation Degree in mech eng, v good grades and lots of practical experience?

    hungrymonkey
    Free Member

    If you don’t get a degree premium in your pay packet, you probably would have been better advised to do something else.

    Why? I’m 5 years out of one of the best uni in Scotland, with a 2:1, and earn less than 25k. But going to uni was invaluable for the experiences and contacts I made. Money isn’t everything – I’m happy with what I’ve achieved professionally since and my parents are proud too. I don’t need the pay packet to prove my achievements…

    I don’t think uni is for everyone but as a few have said, uni is for learning not necessarily to bolster future financial gain.

    wobbliscott
    Free Member

    People are put off engineering because you actually have to knuckle down and do some work. I was doing over 30 hrs of lectures a week with the same amount of work outside of lectures, and in my first year it was 42 hrs. That was more hours of lectures in one year than a lot of my mates were doing over the full 3 years of their courses. University was just a 3 year pi$$ up for them – so maybe the answer for some degrees regarding the cost to students is to condense some 3 year degrees into 1 or 2 years.

    Also students are being sold a pup regarding expectations of salary as soon as they come out of uni. 20yrs ago when I left uni and stated on a grad training scheme my pay was crap – 20yrs on it’s half decent, but grads coming into the company these days expect to walk straight into a senior managers position. I have no idea where they are getting this level of expectation from, or that they are even capable to do a job of that level in a large organisation.

    Also a lot of degrees in uni’s these days offer very little value to society and industry. A lot of degrees are there to attract some people who normally wouldn’t go to do the traditional subjects to earn money for the universities rather than their usefulness to industry.

    Also my school mates, most of whom didn’t go to uni, are all in a similar situation to me regarding job and salary, so a degree might help you get that first job, but after that it’s all about experience, delivery and performance.

    A degree as an automatic pass to a good job is a myth and the last 15yrs or so where graduate numbers have rocketed has only served to devalue the qualification – supply and demand innit – the more graduates there are out there on offer to industry, the lower their value and therefore the salary level.

    mudshark
    Free Member

    There seemed too many grads when I was a student in the early 90s, I decided to do an MSc as wanted to differentiate myself. Not sure how much that helped in the end but it was funded and I got a good job. These days I see more Indians than Brits on my IT projects so shortage there it seems.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    wobbliscott – Member

    People are put off engineering because you actually have to knuckle down and do some work.

    It’s not so simple. The biggest problem with engineering is that kids lose interest in the necessary subject areas, before they really find out what they’re for. Intermediate maths at high school is, basically, dull as **** and generally pretty unapplied too. So kids lose interest and both underperform, and choose not to progress, and engineering closes as a (straightforward *) option. It’s a pretty vicious combination, maths is both hard to inspire people with, and yet completely essential for some areas of further study.

    Course, it’s possible to return to maths after losing interest, but the UK mostly lays out simple paths to uni and anything that takes kids off that is a harder sell.

    This, incidentally, is one of these things where the problem’s really obvious but nobody really knows what the solution is.

    (* there’s plenty of ways to get back into it, if you want- but the UK in general puts too much focus on the simple school-uni progression, and routes outside that are both poorly understood, and often stigmatised. “What are you doing at uni” “Actually I’m doing a HND…” “Couldn’t get into uni, dur”)

    footflaps
    Full Member

    And yet in engineering good quality graduates are like rocking horse poo

    because the pay is shite.

    Not in Electronics / SW in the South East. You’d easily earn 2x UK average with a few year experience.

    Edric64
    Free Member

    Some degrees seem to be in such Mickey Mouse subjects I doubt much of value is learned for the 30k debt .Craft ,surfing and sport to name a few

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    There was an MSc in brewing when I went through UCAS nearly 40 years ago, so it’s not new.

    Now, if 50% of school leavers go on to do a degree and pay fees, they directly support the universities without government (the general public) having to cough up. If it’s necessary to come up with some shitty courses or drop the entrance requirements well so be it. That’s my take on the political thinking behind it anyway.

    Of course the fact that many student loans will never be repaid does conversely add to the burden on the exchequer.

    sobriety
    Free Member

    MSc in brewing

    Which I would hope would turn out to effectively be a Conversion Course to Chemical and Process Engineering, for that is what brewing is.

    welshfarmer
    Full Member

    Thank heavens for universities. Coming from a sheep farm high in the welsh hills I am not sure if I would have ever lost my virginity to a proper female or discovered drugs and alcohol had I not got a place in uni 30 years ago 🙂

    The fact that I went on to get a PhD and yet somehow still ended up running a sheep farm in the welsh hills has nothing to do anything.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Which I would hope would turn out to effectively be a Conversion Course to Chemical and Process Engineering, for that is what brewing is.

    Well that’s what it became under the brewing giants. The best brewers these days very probably have no qualifications in brewing or chemistry.

    thomthumb
    Free Member

    Thank heavens for universities. Coming from a sheep farm high in the welsh hills I am not sure if I would have ever lost my virginity to a proper female or discovered drugs and alcohol had I not got a place in uni 30 years ago

    The fact that I went on to get a PhD and yet somehow still ended up running a sheep farm in the welsh hills has nothing to do anything

    sounds like that ‘year out’ that mormans have 😉

    br
    Free Member

    It cost me £23k to go + £160k in lost earnings. I still think it was worth it.

    Nice that you were in a position to afford it and you’re Karma’d up 🙂

    loddrik
    Free Member

    Me – MSc in Environmental Planning. Now drive a black cab a couple of days a week.

    I am indeed living the dream.

    sobriety
    Free Member

    The best brewers these days very probably have no qualifications in brewing or chemistry.

    Probably not, but if it’s bigger than homebrew it’ll be a batch process plant, whatever you’d like it to be 😉

    lemonysam
    Free Member

    Which I would hope would turn out to effectively be a Conversion Course to Chemical and Process Engineering, for that is what brewing is.

    Incidentally, there was a really interesting interview with Professor Geoff Palmer on The Life Scientific the other week.

    igm
    Full Member

    Leegee – drop me a line – your email rejected.

    project
    Free Member

    engineering/chemistry, science degrees are hard, things have to work or if they dont , you need to find out or know why.

    Where as english, media studies, philosophy etc are just your interpretation of current thinking so easier to do and could be done as night classes part time.

    vickypea
    Free Member

    Some subjects could be condensed into 2 years, I’m sure.
    I did biochemistry at Manchester, and my week was full of lectures and lab sessions, whereas for some subjects, the students had very little in their timetables. I appreciate that the rest of the time was intended for individual study, but in practice I saw very little evidence of that.

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    I don’t like this condence into 2 year lark. HND is 2 years, call it that. I know quite a few engineers with HNDs and it seems unfair that they would do 2 years (full time) and get a HND were as someone else would do 2 years and get a “degree”.

    ahwiles
    Free Member

    vickypea – Member

    Some subjects could be condensed into 2 years, I’m sure.

    Chap on R4 yesterday, he was/is a University chancellor (or something), said ‘2 year degrees were offered, no-one applied to do them’.

    and why would they?

    (an 18yr old going off to uni isn’t in a rush to get stuck into 40+ years of desk-jockey drudgery)

    vickypea
    Free Member

    Well that’s a fair point, but depends who is going to pay for all these students on courses that allow them to sit around drinking tea all day.

    TheBrick
    Free Member

    Let them. When they are sittign around drinking tea that subsidises the subjects that require more teaching and equipment.

    ahwiles
    Free Member

    30 (?) years ago, 5% (?) of people went to Uni, and we even gave them money to do so.

    how did we pay for that?

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I went back to my faculty about 6 years after I’d graduated and as a result of the expansion they’d already dropped the last year of my BEng degree and now only covered years 1 & 2 of my degree course. The first year was spent covering what used to be called A level maths and physics….

    I suspect they’re now down to just covering the 1st year of my degree as that was 15 years ago.

    dragon
    Free Member

    30 (?) years ago, 5% (?) of people went to Uni, and we even gave them money to do so. how did we pay for that?

    Yeah but life was different then; the internet and computers were stuck in the science/engineering departments. Mobile phones didn’t exist and students were happy to live in halls with shared baths, 3 amp sockets and school dinner catering.

    vickypea
    Free Member

    What dragon said. I lived in a flat of 8 students with 2 toilets and one bath between us. We didn’t have mobile phones or laptops. Nowadays, everyone wants an ensuite bathroom.

    DaRC_L
    Full Member

    dragon & vickypea + 1,
    can I add that we lived opposite a mass murderer too
    (you tell the kids of today and they don’t believe you)

    binners
    Full Member

    My student existence also bore a worryingly close resemblance to an episode of the Young Ones, and nothing remotely like this 🙂

    Tom_W1987
    Free Member

    Students don’t live in luxury apartments, just the Chinese ones.

    The only difference between now and 30 years ago is that a room now… that hasn’t been renovated since the 70’s and in a past life has been used to house room sharing/bunking smack addict prostitutes costs as much as a house if it’s located near to a half decent university.

    vickypea
    Free Member

    In my second year we lived in a house with no central heating and all the gas fires were condemned!

    nick1962
    Free Member


    Even McDonalds have a graduate training scheme nowadays binnners which includes getting your hands dirty on the shopfloor 🙂
    http://www.savethestudent.org/graduate-schemes/mcdonalds.html
    And Greggs!
    https://www.greggsfamily.co.uk/management-and-office/profiles/katie-management-trainee

    ahwiles
    Free Member

    I can assure you that student accommodation is as crap as it’s always been.

    In many cases, it the same accommodation that you lot stayed in, unchanged, not even the beds.

    vickypea
    Free Member

    Well, I will find out the truth in a few weeks’ time as my son is about to go to university!

Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 86 total)

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