STW Junior Designer job £15.6k- did I read that right?

Indeed aracer

Left to the engineers we’d still be riding around on steel rigid bikes with thumb shifters and U brakes….

I think you’re getting confused about the input engineers and designers have to product development.

Left to the engineers we’d still be riding around on steel rigid bikes with thumb shifters and U brakes….

Yes, the impact of graphic designers on bicycle technology is criminally under-rated… 🙄

After three years at uni, I was thrown straight into doing exactly the same job as highly experienced staff.

Yeah but Mike you were taught by Teachers to do Teaching? (might be wrong, assumptions again) So you’d expect them to totally up to speed as to what is required.

Problem is Uni’s are behind industry with the courses they just don’t move fast enough. (old techniques, old software) Especially in digital industries which are moving so fast that it’s hard for companies to keep up.

We are seeing computer science grads still using tables in HTML still 😐

I’ve just learnt the hard way that its not all about the money…..

Unless things change considerably in the next 6-7 years I will be actively discouraging my daughter to go to Uni, unless of course she really wants to. Both me and Mrs STR have our own businesses, left school at 16 and seem to be doing ok.

We are seeing computer science grads still using tables in HTML still

Indeed – had numerous job applicants saying they ‘proficient with table based layout’ 😯

Oh well, so the only job really worth anything are being a binman & brain surgeons then! I’m sure we could do without most jobs that people on here do!

TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR – I’m with you on this one. I’d say that the amount of debt a degree will leave you in is never going to give you that much benefit in a career like graphic design.

What would you be looking at now £50k of debt? And I can’t see a starting salary above what we’re talking about here

I think ultimately, what we’re witnessing now is the complete restructuring of our entire education system. The implications are going to be HUGE within say ten years

I’m sure we could do without most jobs that people on here do!

Yep, my job is pointless, it’s like the arms race though in that way. We’d all have to agree to stop.

njee20 – Member

Average graduate salaries are £29,000!!

Bollocks they are. I live in the South-East, work in London, graduated 3 years ago and don’t know of anyone who got a graduate job anything like that!

The multinational where I work (in the South East) pays grads £15k, or £18,700 in Central London!

Ow I agree! When I moved down to London I was looking at the average wage for a grad Surveyor down here, and it was around £23,000pa

Hmmm on graduation in 2000 I started on 12,600 so I think that’s an ok wage for a junior.

I’m more astounded that a degree is deemed necessary for such a post. Are degrees so devalued nowadays?

as ive said before if you go to uni either go into a course that will make you money or a course that will let you do something you love

i know too many folk that did geography/fine art/ product design and are working for peanuts despite 4 years of graft.

all my friends that did beng engineering have all got jobs on or around the graduate average of 29k…..

I’m more astounded that a degree is deemed necessary for such a post. Are degrees so devalued nowadays?

When there are close on 3 million unemployed, no degree, no interview.

Its bloody stupid, but its been heading that way for years. With tuition fees now, our whole education system needs to fundamentally change. And industries attitude to providing training.

The onus for training and education, and associated costs, has been shouldered entirely by the individual. Companies have reaped the benefits of this in highly qualified and skilled staff without contributing a penny to said education or training. They now need to start paying for some of that with apprenticeships etc. The deal has been too one sided for too long.

The simple fact is, people can no longer afford to pay for that education themselves. So industry needs to start re-thinking its aproach, or its ready supply of highly qualified and skilled staff is about to start drying up

This whole average graduate salary = 29K thing is NOT in any sense the ‘average’ graduate salary.

It’s the average paid by the top 100 or so blue chip graduate employers and is skewed by the likes of Goldman Sachs who pay you your own weight in Faberge eggs.

the graduate average…

Always used to be the average of salaries for graduates on graduate schemes. A fraction of total graduates in any one year.

The actual graduate average includes all those that go into ‘business support’ roles and is much harder to establish.

What he said^^

The onus for training and education, and associated costs, has been shouldered entirely by the individual. Companies have reaped the benefits of this in highly qualified and skilled staff. They now need to start paying for some of that with apprenticeships etc. The deal has been too one sided for too long.

We are going off on one now, …okay I agree but the problem is that employees are much more transient now. They move around much more especially when younger <30. This is a good thing I think for the individuals but makes it harder for a business case to invest heavily in people.

Times are hard so your always going to look for the person with the skills already or if you are going to invest time and training then there is a salary pay off.

It’s the average paid by the top 100 or so blue chip graduate employers and is skewed by the likes of Goldman Sachs who pay you your own weight in Faberge eggs.

+1

Got a few mates who strolled out of Uni into 50k+ positions a few years ago. Most of us didn’t get half that though in London/SE.

The STW salary does seem about right in the current climate, most design and engineering grads have f-all practical experience and take a good while before they can earn their employers any money.

I’d say that the amount of debt a degree will leave you in is never going to give you that much benefit in a career like graphic design

Bit short sighted, if you’re prepared to work hard and have talent you could be potentially earning 30k-100k in London pretty quickly, obviously that’s working up the ranks, junior>middleweight>senior>art director>creative director, don’t necessarily approve of the career path and titles but it’s the way the creative industry works, I would also say the creative industry is pretty buoyant still, yes some large and small agencies have let people go, but from where I’m sitting there’s a lot of freelancers out there in full employment, sometimes earning more than fulltime employees.

I never understand where that graduate figure comes from either. There are a few companies that pay a lot (Aldi, Accenture) but most othergood ones these days seem to be around the 25k mark (multinationals like GSK, L’oreal, P and G) for the type of job I was looking for. There are plenty that pay less. I’ve seen them lower than £20,000 on a regular basis. Interestingly Accenture take you on with no experience and a degree that is not even relevant to their core business of IT.

Given what they are offering I wouldn’t even apply but them I’m a chemist not a graphic designer so maybe I have more choice? I didn’t even apply to jobs offering less than £20,000 (in 2006 and times have changed).

29K IS NOT THE AVERAGE, IT’S THE MEDIAN, WHICH IS THE MID POINT IN THE RANGE OF SALARIES ON OFFER, NOT THE AVERAGE AMOUNT EARNED

Yeah but Mike you were taught by Teachers to do Teaching? (might be wrong, assumptions again) So you’d expect them to totally up to speed as to what is required.

None of my education lecturers had been in a classroom for years. (In fact, a large part of me degree was in the physics department which didn’t really help with primary teaching.) But, we went into schools on placements.

Problem is Uni’s are behind industry with the courses they just don’t move fast enough. (old techniques, old software) Especially in digital industries which are moving so fast that it’s hard for companies to keep up.

Teesside uni’s computing department is absolutely bang up to date software-wise. In fact, they’re probably ahead of industry. Even in my sixth form college, we use up-to-date software (CS4 and will be upgrading to CS5 in the summer).

We are seeing computer science grads still using tables in HTML still

I did a 1 year post-grad ICT course in 2002. We were told we’d need to know HTML in the second semester’s web engineering class so make sure we know it by then, so we weren’t taught it at all. I didn’t use tables even then.

I think some graphic design and computer science lecturers need to have a word with themselves. One good thing about the tuition fees is that students aren’t going to put up with crap courses any more.

Rewski – I presume you’re talking about London. The creative industry may well be pretty buoyant there still. It isn’t anywhere else. It most certainly isn’t in the North West of England (where this job is).

And I wouldn’t think anyone outside London is earning anywhere even remotely approaching £100k in any creative industry. I’d be gob-smacked if they were

29K IS NOT THE AVERAGE, IT’S THE MEDIAN, WHICH IS THE MID POINT IN THE RANGE OF SALARIES ON OFFER, NOT THE AVERAGE AMOUNT EARNED

WRONG! the median is an average. You’re thinking of the mean

BoardinBob – Member
29K IS NOT THE AVERAGE, IT’S THE MEDIAN, WHICH IS THE MID POINT IN THE RANGE OF SALARIES ON OFFER, NOT THE AVERAGE AMOUNT EARNED

I think maths education may need to be improved also 🙂

typing rubbish

I’d say that the amount of debt a degree will leave you in is never going to give you that much benefit in a career like graphic design.

Depends on your attitude to student debt. With a £15.6k salary the debt is meaningless as you’ll not be paying anything towards it.

WRONG! the median is an average. You’re thinking of the mean

I think maths education may need to be improved also

http://www.mathsisfun.com/median.html

The Median is the “middle number” (in a sorted list of numbers).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median

The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one

http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/glossary/mean.html

Middle value of a list.

From the original link

Starting salaries at the UK’s leading graduate employers in 2011 are expected to
remain unchanged from 2010 levels – a median of £29,000. Salaries increased by
7.4% in 2010 and 5.9% in 2009.

Tiger6791 – Actually… I’m talking crap. For a change. Mate of mine, who did the same course as me is now earning over double that in fashion design! He’s a minority of one though

IT worker in shock at what most people consider a decent graduate wage!!

Looking at the report I can’t believe that it’s the proper median either.

Based on the % of roles that fall in each banding it seems highly unlikely that it could be £29k.

My guess is that it’s the median calculated assuming that there is just one position at each salary point.

Minimum permitted salary for trainee solicitors is £16,690.

Which is for two years after a min of 3 years at university and 1 or 2 years post grad (where fees are between £10k and £20k).

Average salary for solicitors in the UK (in 2010) was £42k. (EDIT: Apparently median being £35k.)

I’d still rather be colouring in for a living….

My guess is that it’s the median calculated assuming that there is just one position at each salary point.

That is the problem. It’s a crap report and the £29k thing is very misleading.

BoardingBob, you got mean wrong again. Re-read that .ox.ac.uk link

MEAN
The average value, calculated by adding all the observations and dividing by the number of observations.

binners – yep I did say London. A creative at a major global agency has the potential to earn a lot of money, there’s a fair few northern designers in London town.

Totally agree… do you see my point at why it’s unlikely that the true median is £29k?

Generally across a large sample the median and the mean become pretty close.

The report, as you’ve mentioned, is further misleading as it only looks at a small sample of graduates.

BoardingBob, you got mean wrong again. Re-read that .ox.ac.uk link

I didn’t get anything wrong.

The original report states the median is £29k

Median does not equal the average

Say you have three graduates

1st person earns £30k

2nd person earns £40k

3rd person earns £60k

The mean is £43,333.33

The median is £40,000

“It’s the average paid by the top 100 or so blue chip graduate employers”

neither blue chip nor top 100 employers.

seems like a normal wage for a graduate my industry tbh …. therre were 14 of us on my course and all of us work for different companies – all earning similar money at the start

some of us work designing cash registers , some for BAE systems , some in oil industry

Average salary for solicitors in the UK (in 2010) was £42k.

Jeez, really?

I left school with a hanful of GCSE’s and got a trade – electrician.

At 17 (23 years ago) I was earning between 2.5-5k pa, but spending half my time at college

At 25 (graduate age), 15 years ago, I was earning around £25k pa

At 35 I was earning £35k pa, plus car etc

By the time I took redundancy from a Contract Managers position aged 38, I was earning £40k + with car, healthcare etc.

I now work for myself and have no idea what I’ve earned over the past year (books to be sorted over Christmas), but I’d say it’s in excess of £50k. I’m actually doing what I was 15-20 years ago, back on the tools, but zero stress and not minding my job.

Not going to Uni hasn’t hampered me.

Mrs STR earns around £25k for working 3.5 days a week – cutting mens hair.

A flaming will ensue for talking about salaries, but hey ho – just highlighting why I’m not concerned that I didn’t further my education. It’s not something I get hung up about and was quite happy talking about it when I earned sod all.