As someone who works a lot on recruitment in my job I wouldn’t rule anyone without a degree out of the pool. But we are looking for the right kind of person and experience.

The difference between recruiting for 1 position and recruiting for an intake. Plenty of places will have the first cut done before any CV’s get to them and if you say grad and no degree is on there the CV won’t pass.If you are filtering 200 CV’s for one role you need a quick way to cut them down.

As someone who just graduated from uni this summer, something I overwhelmingly noticed was that the people who perhaps regretted their degree choice were the ones who went to Uni straight after A-levels simply as it was the done thing and just picked a subject they liked the sound off, rather than based on career prospects.

Most of the people who have graduate jobs lined up were those who went to uni with a set career goal, ie gaining the required qualifications to be a lawyer, doctor, optician et al and knew that was the field they wanted to go into from the start.

The people who are now coming out with no jobs in the pipeline are those in the former category who went for the experience and a lack of knowledge of other options. IMO the problem completely lies with a lack of early career advise and work experience. Having multiple work experience weeks at GCSE/AS level, full time career advisers at school and greater advertisement of other options such as apprenticeships is the way forward, rather than an issue with the universities themselves who are only too happy to take the cash.

That said I think very few people regret university itself, for the experience is great and for most people is their chance to move away from home and establish themselves with the aid of a supportive environment.

My wife holds 2 Uni degrees, and as above, I don’t have one,

Technically, on average you each have one degree 😉

…something I overwhelmingly noticed was that the people who perhaps regretted their degree choice were the ones who went to Uni straight after A-levels simply as it was the done thing and just picked a subject they liked the sound off, rather than based on career prospects.

^^ this

Most of the people who have graduate jobs lined up were those who went to uni with a set career goal, ie gaining the required qualifications to be a lawyer, doctor, optician et al and knew that was the field they wanted to go into from the start.

^^ and this

The people who are now coming out with no jobs in the pipeline are those in the former category who went for the experience and a lack of knowledge of other options. IMO the problem completely lies with a lack of early career advise and work experience. Having multiple work experience weeks at GCSE/AS level, full time career advisers at school and greater advertisement of other options such as apprenticeships is the way forward, rather than an issue with the universities themselves who are only too happy to take the cash.

^^ and this as well

rocket jr graduated last week and says exactly the same thing. Congratulations and good luck in the future enigmas

Hands up if you got a grant to go to uni ??

Me.

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As someone who just graduated from uni this summer, something I overwhelmingly noticed was that the people who perhaps regretted their degree choice were the ones who went to Uni straight after A-levels simply as it was the done thing and just picked a subject they liked the sound off, rather than based on career prospects.

That’s certainly true but in the longer term, this changes a bit and a large number of grads regret doing something sensible rather than what they actually wanted (and a huuuuuuuge number of dropouts and course changers reach that conclusion before the end of the course, don’t forget about those).

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“Go to university because that’s what people do” is probably the single biggest issue of all though. I mean, my job is literally to get kids to come to my uni, but it’s also to get the right kids on the right course, we don’t want anyone here who shouldn’t be any more than they want to be in the wrong place or on the wrong course. So that’s a business and a student and a moral need really but we spend so much time basically saying “go elsewhere” or essentially “get your shit together”. So many kids basically have no idea and the parents say “talk to the guy from teh university and he’ll tell you where to go” and it’s just not the right way to get to the right place.

The really interesting and worthwhile conversations are almost never with the kids who ask “what will I do at uni” but “should I” or “can I”.

My wife holds 2 Uni degrees, and as above, I don’t have one,

Technically, on average you each have on degree

I do tell her as we share everything now we’ve got once each. I’m welcome to the Sports Management degree apparently, after-all I’m paying half the student debt of it now ha ha.

Hands up if you got a grant to go to uni ??

Me.

No grant but no fee’s 1 year of loan, no degree to show for it.

What made you drop out? Course/Uni/Culture/saw no future in obtaining a degree/other..

Hands up if you got a grant to go to uni ??

Me.

Our careers officer at school  was at a bit of a loss because, for the previous 30 years, everyone had streamed out of the school gates on the last Friday and then streamed through the gates of the steelworks on the following Monday.

When this was no a longer an option (Thatcher innit.) the careers officer effectively offered you two options.

If you were a bit thick, he told you to join the Army. If you had some  O grades he told you to be a Quantity Surveyor.

He’d obviously read about in a book with no real concept of what it actually entails.

In my Uni intake of 100 students, 6 were from my high school. 40 were from Malaysia, sponsored by their government.

Our school accounted for 10% of the UK students.

What made you drop out? Course/Uni/Culture/saw no future in obtaining a degree/other..

Apparently exam results were meant to be better, that wasn’t int he prospectus, they said turn up have fun and get some letters on the way out. Still maintaining I left by mutual consent rather than trying 3 laps of the resit loop before getting booted. Best and worst decisions of my life back then.

But now some 21 years after doing my A-Levels I doubt anyone would know what degree I do or don’t have

I got a grant – they’d just brought in means testing, so £800 for a year. I also managed to get my employer at the time to sponsor me to do an MBA and just as I finished, they made me redundant, didn’t have to pay my fees and got a 50% salary increase into my next job. 31 years after graduating, I was made redundant earlier this year after 16 years and just about to launch my own e-commerce business. In my day, only 20% of school-leavers went to uni, now it’s 50% and yet I don’t think the graduate job market has increased 2.5x.  There are still subjects such as science, engineering, software engineering where there are chronic skills shortages – a lot due to a large proportion of the current working population retiring in the next 10-15 years.

I didn’t get a grant but I got fees paid and a cheap loan. Today’s RUK fees/loan system is insane. I mean, financially disastrous, economically illiterate, 100% does no good for anyone insane, it’s literally just a way of fudging the numbers on the national debt at the expense of these kids.

‘I don’t think the graduate job market has increased 2.5x’

i dunno it seems you need a degree these days to be employed do to anything from watching job markets.

‘I don’t think the graduate job market has increased 2.5x’

i dunno it seems you need a degree these days to be employed do to anything from watching job markets.

Both can be true 😉 The job need for a degree vs the simplicity asking for grads cause they iz better like is interesting.

Hands up if you got a grant to go to uni ??

Me, too! I was lucky enough to go to uni when the education was free and you got a grant. The last year I was at uni was the year the student loan scheme was introduced so I had to pay off one thousand five hundred pounds or there abouts quite a few years later.

Though what I do now (education sector) has no direct relevance to what I studied (design) I couldn’t have got into the sector without a degree so it wasn’t waste of time. I really enjoyed my time at uni but in the current climat I’m not sure I would do it now.

Not only did I get a (small) grant, I got paid to go to uni – I was on the pre-cursor to this – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Technical_Undergraduate_Scheme

Cheers taxpayers.

it’s literally just a way of fudging the numbers on the national debt at the expense of these kids.

They have some odd accounting methods as well e.g.

Interest accrued on loans – which rises sharply in the chart above – counts as income for the government, even though this interest is simply increasing the outstanding balance on a given loan. A borrower might be well below the threshold at which repayments start, and unlikely to ever repay the principal, let alone the interest.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/07/18/1531923576000/Taking-education-into-account/

 IMO the problem completely lies with a lack of early career advise and work experience. Having multiple work experience weeks at GCSE/AS level, full time career advisers at school and greater advertisement of other options such as apprenticeships is the way forward, rather than an issue with the universities themselves who are only too happy to take the cash.

As someone has just graduated that sounds pretty spot on to me (graduating back in 1989) …

Hands up if you got a grant to go to uni ??

Me, too! I was lucky enough to go to uni when the education was free and you got a grant. The last year I was at uni was the year the student loan scheme was introduced so I had to pay off one thousand five hundred pounds or there abouts quite a few years later.

I graduated in 89 and my brother in 91 .. Between myself and my brother the grant changed from “full grants” to partial… which at the time my bother got round by a sponsorship from British Aerospace.

I don’t regret going but that was different times and a different era to now.

I’m not entirely certain I’d push the current 8yr old to go or to take any science or engineering degree.

My wife holds 2 Uni degrees, and as above, I don’t have one, but we agree, if he wants to go to Uni with our support, it needs to be to study for something that leads to a job, because the world doesn’t need another Michael Mouse Grad, you’re better off going backpacking for a year to ‘grow as a person’ and save yourself the 50k debt.

Where I work the ideal person I would like to employ would have a good Alevel in maths be able to rebuild an engine or other mechanical device and a desire to learn.

what the recruitment policy requires is a Masters or PhD in engineering and often gives us fluid mechanics or thermodynamics specialists which are no good for the role. They get bored or are just plain useless.

The VP of the group started as a technician but with current policy with going to night school he would not have been able to progress beyond the shop floor.

a degree does not equal talent. It can teach some good tools for learning and analysis but the modern HR system is often flawed. What might be a good degree course when you select it at age 16 (AS levels set up the degree) may not be fantastic at 22 when you join the workforce and even less so later on…

Hands up if you got a grant to go to uni ??

*waves*

First year was a ‘full’ grant, then phased out by year 4.

Four years of lectures in things like white water canoeing, hillwalking, skiing, caving, winter climbing.

What might be a good degree course when you select it at age 16 (AS levels set up the degree) may not be fantastic at 22 when you join the workforce and even less so later on…

Exactly and 5 or 10 yrs on…. even less so.

The main thing that uni has taught me is how to solve problems under immense time pressure and stress. The engineering is almost secondary, as unless you’re going into a research/design role it’s mostly common sense and experience over time, not the ability to memorize equations and solve very specific closed systems.

If a decent apprenticeship had been available to me when I was 18 (I did look), I probably would’ve done that, but I’m really glad I took this route and did the degree. Great job prospects, brilliant network, no ragrets.

disclaimer: living in Scotland means my tuition fees were covered (thanks taxpayers), and scholarships kept me fed and watered (thanks institutions), so typical student financial woes weren’t as prevalent for me. My student loan is sat in a savings account waiting to be dumped on a house deposit in a couple of years…

Except in instances where a degree is fundamental to the work (eg. Medicine; Law; Engineering), people shouldn’t go to university unless they have a love for the subject they want to study. University is not a flipping production line for future workers. It is a place for exploring ideas, and the truths behind things.

I long for the day that we start according more respect for the trades and the arts and the people who dedicate themselves to excellence in their fields, and stop pushing bloody universities.

Says SaxonRider who has 5 degrees, and makes far less than probably many on here.

University is not a flipping production line for future workers. It is a place for exploring ideas, and the truths behind things.

Plenty of scope for developing the skills to learn and understand that are key for lots of jobs, train in skills that would be inefficient for small companies to teach. The social experiences broaden peoples horizons and increases the social networks people have. It pushes them out of their comfort zones.

It’s way more than a place to be passionate about a subject.

Full grant here, wouldn’t change a thing and certainly don’t regret it – further ed has been fundamental to my career (scientific research) and I can’t think of anything I’d have rather done.

To give an alternative side to the chemeng thing. I graduated a long time ago with a chemeng degree and it has given me and a lot of others a darned good “career”. Very well rewarded versus the value the average engineer brings. A number of London based grads have gone into investment banking but that has been pretty short term for a lot of them.

Would I recommend an engineering degree now for someone going to uni? Not unless they’re prepared to move to another (read “less developed”) country.

The UK seems to be changing to a service based country. Head for vocational degrees in the service industry … computer science, doctors or lawyers. Accountants will be a vanishing breed as software takes over that role. Engineering in the UK will get smaller and smaller with less and less “native” market for it as we lose every industry we’ve ever had.

Computers don’t look like they’ll take over law or medicine in the middle future and we’ll need folk to fix the computers. Sad … but that’s what I see in the market.

I never did see the point in a non vocational degree. Surely the point of going to uni is to get a “better” job. Why pick a degree that doesn’t have a job type associated with it? Mental.

In my run for world leader, one of my policies would be to fully fund degrees in proportion to the number of jobs we actually have for that degree. Unfortunately, that means there wouldn’t be many fully funded places on TV production or language interpretation.

I graduated in 89

Me too.. after a couple of years doing A Levels (transferring Edu from the US to the UK system back then was might difficult..)

Full grant from Shropshire CC LEA. I had to have an interview too! Bit weird, I remember it well.. It went like this..

“why do you want to go to uni?”

“what course will you be taking, and why?”

“which Uni’s have you chosen?”

“thank you for your time, you’ll hear from us in due course”

A week later all was sorted and I had the summer months to go sailing…

I do remember distinctly the social depravity in the area that we moved back too. Ironbridge was still a foundry town, less so but there were still two big foundries in Coalbrookdale churning out manhole covers and gates etc. Up in Telford it was beginning to become an industry focal point for “emerging industries” and a load of big industry moved in and took hold of a mass unemployed workforce and paid them a pittance for their labours..

I thought to myself ‘sod that” and thankfully my house tutor thought the same and pushed me into further Ed, glad he did but I’d already made my mind up that I didn’t want to turn out like the kids at the collage I did my A Levels in, they just seemed to lack any motivation to do anything. It was quite depressing actually.. a whole generation wasted because of lack of opportunities..

Fatcha, and the Conservatives.. same then as now, except now you have to hold down a debt the size of a small european country if you choose Uni..

I really don’t understand how the last generation will cope.

In the FT today;

Economists have found that being a contestant for eight weeks on Love Island can boost your lifetime earnings more than a degree from England’s top universities.

Analysis by Frontier Economics, an economic consultancy, estimated that someone who appears on the show could expect to earn £1.1m from subsequent sponsorship and appearance fees compared with a lifetime average return of £815,000 from completing an undergraduate degree at Oxbridge. With the hit ITV2 show, featuring sun, sangria and sex on the east coast of Mallorca, Spain, reaching its climax on Monday, five Frontier economists spent two weeks demonstrating that celebrity pays more than scholarship.

I really don’t understand how the last generation will cope

With debts from education increasing the only way I can see it resolved is wage escalation for STEM like there is in the US and wage depression for everyone else.. or farm out the degree level jobs to immigrants or other countries

I missed out on student grants due to waiting until all my mates returned from uni to go. Did fine art. Then spent 16 years in shit jobs I hated until finally falling into a job that paid enough that student loan repayment deductions started happening. I think I was probably pretty close to falling back into the pit of despair university scraped me out of if I’d spent anymore time standing in a shithole factory next to dirty noisy injection moulding machines. Biggest regret of uni is somehow linking getting twatted as much as possible with progress. To be fair I studied art, so anything goes in terms of inspiration, but it probably could have gone better I think. Just clueless. Never figured out what I wanted to do, either the options didn’t exist for me or I was totally blind to them. Expecting an 18 year old to do so seems like a joke.

my degree took me out of my dead end hometown and gave me a foothold in the city I call home.

Professionally it hasn’t really done anything for me, but for the above alone, totally worth it.

Some really weird narrow-minded comments here.

Why should degree choice always be linked to a job?  Does this mean everybody should only do a course that leads to a job even if they aren’t interested in it?  Get a grip.  Jobs and money are not always the goal.  Do something you are interested in and want to learn about, move away from home make new friends and have new experiences.  THAT is the point of further education.

Completely agree Andy Kirk, but getting yourself into 30k+ worth of debt is maybe not the most cost effective way of doing that.

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Fatcha, and the Conservatives.. same then as now, except now you have to hold down a debt the size of a small european country if you choose Uni..

Hold down being the operative word, because the current prediction is that only 23% of all students will repay their loans in full. That has a weird knockon effect that for the 77% that don’t, there’s no incentive to reduce their loan in any way- no reason to pay extra, no reason to avoid fees, or even to worry about missing repayments, or to worry about the ridiculous rise in interest rates, because all it does is change the amount that gets written off at the end.

Mindboggling truth is that the increase in tuition fees to the current £9000+ structure isn’t just saddling students with debt, it costs the taxpayer more than the old £3000+ structure- because while total debt has gone up, we’re actually going to recoup less after all costs and writeoffs.

(well, I say that- I can’t prove it, because the government stopped publishing the data that would have proved it, 3 years ago at the exact point that it was predicted it’d go negative. Inexplicably)

You go to university for an education, not to get a job. I reckon anywho. I did neither, but did get shitfaced for four years. Which works for me.

Frontier economists spent two weeks demonstrating that celebrity pays more than scholarship.

Might get a bit crowded if 50% of school leavers go to love island. Might turn a little more battle royale.

I went to uni 22 years ago to do an HND in software engineering. I just didn’t apply myself, had huge amounts of fun but fell into crap jobs after dropping out. I completely lost all my self discipline. I don’t think the gap year working in a fast food chain helped. I’ve regretted not having the confidence to go back and finish my studies.

Anyhow my personal opinion is that degrees help massively and in fact are essential within certain fields. To achieve a certain level within some engineering companies you need to be a chartered engineer. You cannot be a chartered engineer without a degree.

So despite the costs I’m now studying a technology type degree with the OU. I’m trying to future proof myself. At the same time I’m starting up my own garden maintenance business. I’ve just completed a pesticide course and shall be doing an RHS Horticultural course too. Whilst continuing the OU degree. It’s costing me a lot but I’m loving the freedom of working and learning when I want without rushing to go to the office and do work in a role I wasn’t passionate about. If my business succeeds I’ll still continue my degree. It may not be applicable to running a garden business but if my dream goes tits up then I have a back up.

Degrees do help to check that box when applying for jobs. Nearly all the civil service jobs I’d been looking at required a degree. Some jobs don’t need degrees, i.e. Air Traffic Controller, Train Driver, bus driver and many others but, with a degree you’ll be able to apply for those jobs and many, many others. Whether you’ll get them or not is another matter but you’ll be in the running more than those without. So long as it’s STEM oriented.

Our receptionist has a degree in biology but there are simply not enough jobs available or to go around for all biology graduates so working as receptionist bring in income for now …

I only went to Uni because I wanted to see the western world as my future was bleak in my home town.  I thought I could learn some new ideas to bring home to start my own, but then when I went home (after I graduated) I was “too advance” or ahead of of my time making me unemployable.  In those days the govt of my country was also focusing more on helping people with similar religion so chances of me surviving or doing well was pretty slim.

Yes, going to Uni is for education but a person cannot survive on education without a job.