Ok so-

Graduated with a 2.2 from a good (well they think they are…) Uni last summer and since then have been working in a few bikeshops.

The dream* is to have a ‘proper’ job- but 2.2’s seem to be worthless? Can find very few graduate scheme/entry level jobs that’ll take one.

So my question to the STW braintrust is this- is it worth getting a masters? Does that overwrite my undergrad? …is it worth putting all my savings (and I’d need to work another year probs) into?! It wouldn’t be from a great uni but is something like ‘Business and financial management’ more employable than just an Economics Ba?

Sorry for boring post. Just don’t know what to do or who to talk to 🙁

Tom

* anyone got a dream to work in a bikeshop and fancy a swap? 😉

Entirely depends on your intended career.

I don’t have a degree (let alone a Masters or even any A-Level above a D!!), and have been very sucessful so far within my industry…

Two thoughts. You’re only as good as your last exam. Get the masters, no one cares about the 2:2.

However, experience trumps a qualification pretty much every time. I’ve got a 2:1 Mech Eng from a well regarded Uni and it’s not worth wiping my bottom on if I’m honest.

Friends of mine who are doing well in life are doing so because of a combination of hard graft and good fortune. None of them are particularly well qualified. The old idea of a degree meaning a better job meaning more money are long dead in my opinion.

University is now just a tool for keeping down the unemployment figures.

I did an MSc to make up for the fact I surfed too much and didn’t work enough during my degree. It worked but that was twelve years ago.

Sorry, but I think your mistake is to think that a university degree gets you a job.

A B.A., at least for the thousand-or-so years before they got watered down to a job-prep certificate to be taken from any old polytechnic that applied to call itself a university, was meant to introduce you at a higher level to what it was that made the world go ’round. The precise content of the B.A. was immaterial to the employment taken afterward.

Yet even now, the ’employability’ of a degree holder – unless in a technical subject like engineering – will still be based on the maturity and insight into the world that he or she gained doing the degree.

The fact that you have a B.A. in economics presumably means that you have an interest in the subject, but maybe you have to think outside of the box in terms of how you might deploy that in the working world.

Whatever you do, though, please don’t take an M.A. because you think it will increase your employability. Take it because you want to and because you love the subject.

The Masters doesn’t sound like a great idea tbh – what has changed with you that you would suddenly start putting your back into study? It’s not like it’s a different area.

These days, a desmond usually indicates someone who wasn’t engaged with their course, for whatever reason. Could be a perfectly legitimate one, like family, medical reasons etc. Or more usually, it’s because you’ve been a lazy bastard and didn’t put the hours in. Regardless, I’d be reluctant to continue down the same track of study unless you can clearly see what went awry with the degree.

Plenty of people in ‘proper’ jobs with 2.2s who are doing great, by the way. It’s a question of thinking about your skills and looking for other ways in.

I did an MSc to make up for the fact I surfed too much and didn’t work enough during my degree. It worked but that was twelve years ago.

You should have done this degree…Surf Science

You should have done this degree…Surf Science

i effectively did. it started a year or so after I left and used the majority of the modules from my oceanography degree with a bit of business studies thrown in.