[Closed] has not having a degree held you back?

All this "school of hard knocks" & "Univeristy of Life" business isn't fooling anyone, you're uneducated and dull - you may be able to earn a decent wage but hold a decent conversation, I think not

Quality trolling. 🙂

I think the most valuable part of having obtained a degree is not having to explain why I don't have one at interview. Rightly or wrongly, employers see it as a yardstick.

I went to a Scottish Uni (originally) where the first two years were broad and the final two specialised. I have used more of what I learnt in the first half than the second in my subsequent life. I do not regret the higher levels of specialisation required in the second half for one moment, but is funny that you have to un-learn/dumb down that knowledge in the real world! Not sure whose to blame for that academia or much of the crassness of modern work/world!

I don't think it has and now my experience counts for more. I wouldn't want to join the current first job market without one though.

Also it depends on your view of what success is.

I've got a BEng (hons) MechEng. I think if I had my time again I'd not bother. it may have helped get me this job but there are plenty of people around me doing well who don't have one.

If I could go back to when I finished my gcse I'd have looked harder for an apprenticeship.

The only reason I did a-levels and then a degree was because I got good grades and social pressure tells you it's the only way to be a success.

Counter question; ever known someone with a degree who think's it's held them back?

Possibly. My company wont employ anyone without a degree (although they often buy other companies and take on plenty of staff that don't have degrees) and there is a lot of pressure to perform to a certain level. With the oil industry as it is, there seems work yourself to death ethic, which i don't buy into. To my colleagues and managers i'm a bit odd, so i'm left to my own devices really.

RJ - good point, degrees often help/are required to get on the job ladder. Sweat and ability determine how far you climb up it (or if others are correct, the sharpness of your knife!!!!).

Slowmart has it in my opinion - it depends on the industry and/or role that you're in. Rightly or wrongly I would not be in this job without a degree; in fact, compared to my peers and colleagues I am under-qualified given that I don't have a further qualification such as PhD or MBA. Clearly, that would not be the case in another area.

Clearly I cannot directly answer the OP as I have no experience in my career without a degree.

My father was extremely successful and only finished high school by correspondence. The father of a good friend is worth a few million, and didn't even finish high school. So I agree with the whole notion of drive being a big factor in getting ahead.

That said, I have 5 degrees and work in an FE college, because I couldn't find F/T academic work. No one was clamouring to hire me. And I [i]do[/i] have drive. Equally, some of our lecturers here have 1st class Oxbridge degrees and some have degrees from supposedly shit universities and they ended up working in the same place with the same salary levels.

A degree should be about what you take from it and make of it, and not a rite of passage or a job requirement (except professional degrees like engineering and medicine for example).

If you're a thinker and motivated then not having a degree should not hold you back at being successful at all. But access to some work/jobs depends on having a suitable one. E.g. there are very very few non-graduates in my industry; there are quite a few doctorates. So if you are motivated to do similar work to me then you're going to need a Maths, Physics, Engineering or Computing degree.

I really hate snobbery toward non-grads! In fact I completely hate snobbery. Snobs are basically insecure; they mock what they fear.

thisisnotaspoon - Member

Counter question; ever known someone with a degree who think's it's held them back?

Yes, my ex!

Only because she's a complete tool and did the wrong subject in the first place!

If you intend to work for yourself and/or create your own business you only need a degree for professional reasons.

I left school at 16 and went to college, but as I'm late 40's there was less pressure as only about 10% went to Uni. I don't think not having a degree has particularly held me back, but then maybe it has - don't know. But without one I managed to get to a 6-figure salary 🙂

[I really hate snobbery toward non-grads!] +1
Does my head in. I'm from humble beginnings; my mum didn't go to uni and had an office job before getting made redundant. I just scraped through with my degree but I'm by no means a high flyer. Sometimes wonder whether I'd have been better off doing something vocational like hairdressing!

I think maybe some of the problem is the 'entry path' for most degree level education is 'GCSE, A-Level, uni' - it means that you can leave fully 'qualified' without ever having had to work for a living or take responsibility for yourself, so the people that come out of uni are often not as 'rounded' as those of the same age who have lived 'in the real world'

Aged sixteen and a few days I got dropped into a workplace with a load of 40 year old blokes with chainsaws and heavy machinery - it made me grow up a lot and taught me a work ethic quickly.

Perhaps nobody should be allowed into uni before the age of 21?

Perhaps nobody should be allowed into uni before the age of 21?

Yes because the world would be a much better place if everyone followed your lead. 😆

And I do have drive.

Well it isn't towards grafting if you have 5 degrees! 😀

Re the OP. Yes is the simple answer.

When I was of that age only 5% of the population would get to university, and it was very definately a big door opener. Still is, but probably not to the same extent as back in the day.

Having said that this sort of thread will elicit two sorts of responses.

1) Them that have been there and got one
2) Them that haven't

No prizes for figuring out which the stock responses come from.

Perhaps nobody should be allowed into uni before the age of 21?

Possibly. Or maybe this is a load of bollocks:

so the people that come out of uni are often not as 'rounded' as those of the same age who have lived 'in the real world'

Try telling that to the work experience student we had in the other day. Romanian, taught herself English, on for a decent law degree from a good university. Works full time as well to support herself, her disabled uncle, and send money back to Romania to support her impoverished mother.

Real world enough for you?

Counter question; ever known someone with a degree who think's it's held them back?

Hmmm, the grass is always greener on the other side though.
My degree helped my get my first job, but 20 years on is largely irrelevant. I sometimes think that without a degree I'd have gone and done something more interesting.
Now I'm driving a desk with a mortgage and a family and would love to retrain to something more vocational, but the bills need paying and the kids will insist on eating and wearing shoes etc, so I can't take the required short term financial hit right now.

My old boss never had a degree - he worked his way up from the shopfloor. But then again he will be MD one day as he's very ambitious and is good at the corporate politics of which I hate

Yes it has, criteria for promotion at work is MUST be degree qualified, 27 years of experience count for jack even to the point where only young graduate ideas are considered as experience cannot bring new thinking to the business 😯

IME it get's you through the door of your first job then you are on your own.

It annoys me that a degree is seen as essential for some jobs when it clearly isn't. For many it is just a tick in the box to prove you can do it.

My first job had nothing to do with my Chemistry degree (although my current one does). My wife did Biochemistry and now works in IT as the company took you on if you had a degree, didn't matter what subject.

I agree that more companies should do apprenticeships. Ours lets people study part time for a degree while working part time and earning some money and getting experience that really counts for something.

If you have the choice then I'd say do a degree, especially if you are 18. There is more to it than the certificate and you shouldn't be in a hurry to "mature" too much.

No, although in the short term, when I failed my second year at Uni, yes.

Uni failures / drop-outs are awkward in the first-proper-job market: no useful experience (probably), over qualified for school leaver type positions, under-qualified for graduate stuff, about the only doors I could open were "educated to degree level" specifications.

Eventually got one of those, and from then on, it's not held me back in the slightest. Fortunately ended up in a line of work (accountancy) where a proper professional qualification can be achieved without a degree as a pre-requisite.

Perhaps nobody should be allowed into uni before the age of 21?

There's an argument that you can do that anyway, but when you are 17, you don't really think about these things and it seems very much one or the other in your head at the time.

I regret not having a degree, not really for job prospects, but more for personal development than anything and getting into a more interesting fulfilling field. Really tempted to go get one. (but in something different, I'd like a change.).

Regarding, has a degree held me back, not in the sense of ambition, because really I'm not all that interested in it, long as I have a job I'm fine. I'm not really all that interested in getting in to management positions etc, and only reason took a supervisors roll because it was handed to me on a plate.

But in the sense that I might have got myself a more interesting job to stick at, probably I think so.

Has not having a degree held me back? Yes, graduates in my line of work have seniority credited to their reckonable service, which in turn dictates when we become eligible for promotion. All my graduate peers became eligible for promotion 3 years before me even though we all do the same work to which, in general, a degree makes no difference - for example, a colleague who has, say, a 3rd in Film Studies from a former poly is no more qualified to do what we do than me with 2 A Levels and an HND but can be promoted earlier because of "experience" gained at university whilst my previous real world experience counts for nought.

No amount of drive or graft above and beyond makes a difference either - without that 3 years at university I might as well be flogging a dead horse...

ever known someone with a degree who think's it's held them back?

No but there is a theory that to be really successful it's easiest without a degree as you have less to lose. A decent grad can usually get into a decent career and end up earning 2,3 or more times the average salary. So a decent grad has to be willing to risk that potential to instead go it alone and build up something vastly bigger. So an interesting bit of research would be to see out of successful entrepreneurs how many have degrees - is the proportion of non-grads higher than compared to the proportion in middle income earners say?

My undergraduate degree hasn't helped me in the slightest - I work in an entirely unrelated field... although that might change.

I don't regret it, mind.

All my graduate peers became eligible for promotion 3 years before me even though we all do the same work to which, in general, a degree makes no difference

So you started three years before them, so all in all, no difference...

My undergraduate degree hasn't helped me in the slightest - I work in an entirely unrelated field... although that might change.

I don't regret it, mind.

+1

Seems to be hardly anyone who thinks you can learn things on a degree and broaden your mind - in a way which might be beneficial to you as a person but that's not about climbing the career ladder. 😕

jam bo - Member

All my graduate peers became eligible for promotion 3 years before me even though we all do the same work to which, in general, a degree makes no difference

So you started three years before them, so all in all, no difference...

Err, no. I pointed out, implicitly admittedly, that I'd worked in another job to that which I do now whilst they'd all been at university and therefore we all started with our current employer at the same time. Technically speaking, I suppose they [i]were[/i] my peers at the time we all started, and for the first few years of employment.

Try telling that to the work experience student we had in the other day. Romanian, taught herself English, on for a decent law degree from a good university. Works full time as well to support herself, her disabled uncle, and send money back to Romania to support her impoverished mother.

Real world enough for you?

Problem is that you're talking here about a clearly [i]very [/i]motivated foreign student who has a clear set of goals she wants to achieve.

The average UK graduate though is a totally different proposition unfortunately......

My last two jobs which have been senior management level have both required a degree level candidate with an accounting qualification, none of which I have but I still got the jobs through good experience and a hard working attitude

My degree has never really helped me. In fact it has hindered me years back when I just wanted a manual labour type job....

I think that the whole idea of connecting degree to work is at leadst partly informed by British classism.

Two examples:

1. A friend of mine took a very good B.Sc. from University of British Columbia (Canada's 3rd-ranked University), and he [i]chose[/i] to be a hairdresser. Here, I think that the assumption tends to be that you become a hairdresser because 'you aren't very academic' or your GCSEs are crap.

2. I used to drive a 1972 MGB, so spent quite a bit of time at my mechanic's. He had been a research chemist at the local university (he had an MSc), but gave it up for cars. Because he liked cars. His garage looked like a garage, and he would greet you with oil-covered hands, and oil-stained cover-alls, but in the evenings, he was a patron of the symphony, and a big arts donor. In other words, well-educated, but doing the things he liked.

I always admired both of these guys.

I sometime wish I had the chance to go to university but due to reasons beyond my control I couldn't, so I opted for ther work hard route.
As others have said, a degree will get you a few rungs up the ladder but hard work can get you higher (and being sneaky).

1. A friend of mine took a very good B.Sc. from University of British Columbia (Canada's 3rd-ranked University), and he chose to be a hairdresser. Here, I think that the assumption tends to be that you become a hairdresser because 'you aren't very academic' or your GCSEs are crap.

Surely in most places that's the assumption? Your friend must be an exception - even in Canada.

I know a chap in the UK who's very bright and works in an pretty much unskilled job in a factory. He did try teaching but didn't get on with it so now just works in a job he doesn't seem suited to but seems happy enough otherwise. I guess he just doesn't want responsibility and has little career ambition.

I think you'll find this guy has done OK: http://www.nodegree.co.uk/

I'm in exactly the same business and do pretty well without a degree. The only degree-holder I've ever employed was a complete donut. Absolutely zero common sense.

And judging by some of the posts above, having a degree doesn't help with spelling or punctuation.

Nope, not really.
For reference, I hold a board level report position in a FTSE100 company and I do not have a degree.

Njees post is telling. It's pretty much my experience off degrees - even am unrelated one can get you an interview which is an unfair system. Although, degrees directed related to skills can be an important indicator of ability.

I'm an advocate of hard work, ability and application, I wouldn't care about your education more your ability to do the job well and apply yourself. Me, no degree yet I'm a high ranking European specialist in a global company. To hammer home the point, it took three grads 3 years to reach the same level I reached in six months 20 years ago - bearing in mind the technology differences. They were employed on the basis of their business management degrees. Me, I'd been employed a year after college with my only experience being 6 months brazing in a factory - nothing to do with IT or business.

I don't have one, but am looking to enrolling on one.

A change of direction within IT means I [b]need[/b] a degree to even enter that realm!

My BSc and MSc degrees got me my early jobs, without them no chance. FWIW after 10 years or so having a degree is largely irrelevant in most fields, it's about performance on the job and personal qualities plus a dollop of luck. I have a number of peers and people senior to me without a Uni level education.

I reckon I would have still ended up in the same job regardless of a degree...I don't have one BTW

grum - Member
Seems to be hardly anyone who thinks you can learn things on a degree and broaden your mind - in a way which might be beneficial to you as a person but that's not about climbing the career ladder.

Just to disagree with you for a change Grum 😉 that's exactly what I would say. A huge benefit of Uni is the opportunity to broaden your mind and take several years to do it. A unique opportunity before the treadmill of 'professional life.'* Whether that is worth £30k plus is another matter!!

* another reason why I hate the pressure on internships. I was ****ed by an HR department for suggesting this once to undergraduates. But this is the time to do interesting things and to travel, not be stuck in the office doing the delgated c.

I would not have my job without a degree. I am in senior management at a large organisation and there are very few people here, at this level without degrees. Not impossible though.

[i]A change of direction within IT means I need a degree to even enter that realm! [/i]

If you were entering my realm in IT, I wouldn't care in the slightest if you had a degree or not. I'd want evidence that you were passionate about the realm, you could demonstrate enthusiasm, knowledge and intelligence around the relevant subjects. I'd want to see that you'd spent your own time building your skillset in the appropriate areas and were confident and assured about your knowledge levels.

I'd also want to check that you had the regulation number of pens and screwdrivers in your shirt pocket and that your trouser to shoe gap met compliance.

[i]. And you have time t post here? [/i]
Advantage of being in charge. 😉

@samuri - No degree = not even going to bother reading the rest of the CV, regardless of how much experience (or pro certifications) I may have.

Feedback from those advertising the posts say it's equally frustrating on their side too, but the powers above them stipulate a degree in CompSci (or related technical sci degree) as absolute minimum.

holding back from what??-- rat race occupations ?