How demanding will be a computer science degree for the next 10 years?
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Original post by alexp98
I though it's a very well respected field
In all fairness that was just a little troll, all degrees are in some way useful. However, the superiority of STEM degrees is over-exaggerated and unfounded. Taken from my post in another thread: ( http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=64661403&postcount=234 )
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1514978/cbi_education_and_skills_survey_2012.pdf
'STEM qualifications alone are not enough - many employers find that applicants lack general workplace experience (42%) and are weak in employability skills (39%).'
'About a fifth of graduate-level jobs need applicants to have studied a specific discipline at university, but in recruiting for other roles employers prefer graduates holding STEM degrees (favoured by 50% of employers).' - The thing to take from this is that for jobs where the degree you took doesn't even matter, 50% prefer STEM graduates, and 50% do not. Seems pretty even to me. I want to stress that this is for jobs without a specific degree requirement, i.e. not chemical engineering or whatever.This is for regular, ordinary jobs, and the preference split between STEM graduates and non-STEM graduates is exactly equal.
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
'Employability skills are the most important factor taken into account when businesses recruit graduates - four in five employers (81%) value these skills above other factors such as degree subject (70%) and class (46%).' - Only TSR gets so antsy about degree subject, employers care more about your actual workplace skills.
'Among those firms that need employees with STEM skills and knowledge, two in five (42%) currently have difficulties recruiting staff.' - When you consider this in accordance with the fact that 42% of STEM employees lack general workplace experience, and 39% are weak in employability skills, this would suggest that there is not actually a shortage of STEM workers; the reason why employers are finding it difficult to recruit is because STEM graduates lack employability skills.
Original post by Abstract_Prism
In all fairness that was just a little troll, all degrees are in some way useful. However, the superiority of STEM degrees is over-exaggerated and unfounded. Taken from my post in another thread: ( http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=64661403&postcount=234 )
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1514978/cbi_education_and_skills_survey_2012.pdf
'STEM qualifications alone are not enough - many employers find that applicants lack general workplace experience (42%) and are weak in employability skills (39%).'
'About a fifth of graduate-level jobs need applicants to have studied a specific discipline at university, but in recruiting for other roles employers prefer graduates holding STEM degrees (favoured by 50% of employers).' - The thing to take from this is that for jobs where the degree you took doesn't even matter, 50% prefer STEM graduates, and 50% do not. Seems pretty even to me. I want to stress that this is for jobs without a specific degree requirement, i.e. not chemical engineering or whatever.This is for regular, ordinary jobs, and the preference split between STEM graduates and non-STEM graduates is exactly equal.
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
'Employability skills are the most important factor taken into account when businesses recruit graduates - four in five employers (81%) value these skills above other factors such as degree subject (70%) and class (46%).' - Only TSR gets so antsy about degree subject, employers care more about your actual workplace skills.
'Among those firms that need employees with STEM skills and knowledge, two in five (42%) currently have difficulties recruiting staff.' - When you consider this in accordance with the fact that 42% of STEM employees lack general workplace experience, and 39% are weak in employability skills, this would suggest that there is not actually a shortage of STEM workers; the reason why employers are finding it difficult to recruit is because STEM graduates lack employability skills.
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1514978/cbi_education_and_skills_survey_2012.pdf
'STEM qualifications alone are not enough - many employers find that applicants lack general workplace experience (42%) and are weak in employability skills (39%).'
'About a fifth of graduate-level jobs need applicants to have studied a specific discipline at university, but in recruiting for other roles employers prefer graduates holding STEM degrees (favoured by 50% of employers).' - The thing to take from this is that for jobs where the degree you took doesn't even matter, 50% prefer STEM graduates, and 50% do not. Seems pretty even to me. I want to stress that this is for jobs without a specific degree requirement, i.e. not chemical engineering or whatever.This is for regular, ordinary jobs, and the preference split between STEM graduates and non-STEM graduates is exactly equal.
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
'Employability skills are the most important factor taken into account when businesses recruit graduates - four in five employers (81%) value these skills above other factors such as degree subject (70%) and class (46%).' - Only TSR gets so antsy about degree subject, employers care more about your actual workplace skills.
'Among those firms that need employees with STEM skills and knowledge, two in five (42%) currently have difficulties recruiting staff.' - When you consider this in accordance with the fact that 42% of STEM employees lack general workplace experience, and 39% are weak in employability skills, this would suggest that there is not actually a shortage of STEM workers; the reason why employers are finding it difficult to recruit is because STEM graduates lack employability skills.
Some pretty good stuff in there, although it seems like the trend seems to be that people who do stem subjects and something like economics too can access all the well paid specific fields and the 'ordinary' jobs you specified. Wheread I assume a history or law degree for eg wouldn't enable you to do the specific jobs as I've seen in a lot of graduate jobs entry requirements. I'm pretty new to all this though and haven't even started uni so could be wrong but it's just what I found when browsing many graduate jobs in all disciplines.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by alexp98
Some pretty good stuff in there, although it seems like the trend seems to be that people who do stem subjects and something like economics too can access all the well paid specific fields and the 'ordinary' jobs you specified. Wheread I assume a history or law degree for eg wouldn't enable you to do the specific jobs as I've seen in a lot of graduate jobs entry requirements. I'm pretty new to all this though and haven't even started uni so could be wrong but it's just what I found when browsing many graduate jobs in all disciplines.
It seems that way. Basically if you do STEM you do have access to more potential jobs you can apply to (those that require a STEM degree), and everyone else can only apply to the ones that do not require a specific degree subject.
Well, that's not quite true. You mentioned Law, and Law grads have access to all the specific law jobs that generic degree holders can't apply for. I suppose there are all sorts of jobs that require a variety of specific degrees. Even so, as we can see, four fifths of graduate jobs do not, and both STEM and Arts degrees are preferred equally (50%), so there's no need to worry anyway.
Original post by Abstract_Prism
In all fairness that was just a little troll, all degrees are in some way useful. However, the superiority of STEM degrees is over-exaggerated and unfounded. Taken from my post in another thread: ( http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showpost.php?p=64661403&postcount=234 )
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1514978/cbi_education_and_skills_survey_2012.pdf
'STEM qualifications alone are not enough - many employers find that applicants lack general workplace experience (42%) and are weak in employability skills (39%).'
'About a fifth of graduate-level jobs need applicants to have studied a specific discipline at university, but in recruiting for other roles employers prefer graduates holding STEM degrees (favoured by 50% of employers).' - The thing to take from this is that for jobs where the degree you took doesn't even matter, 50% prefer STEM graduates, and 50% do not. Seems pretty even to me. I want to stress that this is for jobs without a specific degree requirement, i.e. not chemical engineering or whatever.This is for regular, ordinary jobs, and the preference split between STEM graduates and non-STEM graduates is exactly equal.
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
'Employability skills are the most important factor taken into account when businesses recruit graduates - four in five employers (81%) value these skills above other factors such as degree subject (70%) and class (46%).' - Only TSR gets so antsy about degree subject, employers care more about your actual workplace skills.
'Among those firms that need employees with STEM skills and knowledge, two in five (42%) currently have difficulties recruiting staff.' - When you consider this in accordance with the fact that 42% of STEM employees lack general workplace experience, and 39% are weak in employability skills, this would suggest that there is not actually a shortage of STEM workers; the reason why employers are finding it difficult to recruit is because STEM graduates lack employability skills.
http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1514978/cbi_education_and_skills_survey_2012.pdf
'STEM qualifications alone are not enough - many employers find that applicants lack general workplace experience (42%) and are weak in employability skills (39%).'
'About a fifth of graduate-level jobs need applicants to have studied a specific discipline at university, but in recruiting for other roles employers prefer graduates holding STEM degrees (favoured by 50% of employers).' - The thing to take from this is that for jobs where the degree you took doesn't even matter, 50% prefer STEM graduates, and 50% do not. Seems pretty even to me. I want to stress that this is for jobs without a specific degree requirement, i.e. not chemical engineering or whatever.This is for regular, ordinary jobs, and the preference split between STEM graduates and non-STEM graduates is exactly equal.
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
'Employability skills are the most important factor taken into account when businesses recruit graduates - four in five employers (81%) value these skills above other factors such as degree subject (70%) and class (46%).' - Only TSR gets so antsy about degree subject, employers care more about your actual workplace skills.
'Among those firms that need employees with STEM skills and knowledge, two in five (42%) currently have difficulties recruiting staff.' - When you consider this in accordance with the fact that 42% of STEM employees lack general workplace experience, and 39% are weak in employability skills, this would suggest that there is not actually a shortage of STEM workers; the reason why employers are finding it difficult to recruit is because STEM graduates lack employability skills.
I agree that they're not enough by themselves, that's why I reiterated many times that you need to do other things on top of your degree, just like with any other degree. STEM degrees are no different.
That's why I said not to just rely on people teaching you but to undertake placements, year-long placements or even Summer placements for each year of your degree, this gives people experience and develops their soft skills. Having other projects that you create yourself, as well as with others at something like hackathons (sponsored ones or not) so you can build up a portfolio to include on your CV will only help you too. I've been doing that for a while already, I know that I'll be just fine
Relying on a degree by itself won't get people anywhere. I've seen interviews with people that went to top universities and haven't done anything else, when asked to write or fix an algorithm or write a simple program they didn't know what to do, it was kind of funny and depressing at the same time. They can't even look people in the eye.
If you can't do self-learning too you're not going to get anywhere, this applies to all fields (even ones with placements built into the course), don't rely on others to teach you everything you need to know for the real world because they're not going to. Take it into your own hands. You're going to have to do self-learning for the rest of your career anyway and needing to develop and adapt to needing new skills, so start now.
If you can demonstrate that you can actually apply your skills before you graduate you'll be just fine. Scrambling around afterwards isn't going to help. When you enter the real world you'll see how competitive it is and the people that have done extra stuff will be the ones getting the positions you wanted.
(edited 7 years ago)
i think you mean in demand and not demanding 
Original post by Abstract_Prism
In
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
'The highest median graduate starting salaries are paid for legal roles (£24,000) and engineering and science roles (£23,000).' - The highest paid median graduate job salary is not in a STEM role.
1st of all the data on there is largely rubbish, the upper quartile for almost all roles given is much higher than stated and I'm fairy certain if that is wrong then the median is too.
Anyway, the highest starting comp package goes to software geeks at top tier tech companies..
Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Princepieman
1st of all the data on there is largely rubbish, the upper quartile for almost all roles given is much higher than stated and I'm fairy certain if that is wrong then the median is too.
Anyway, the highest starting comp package goes to software geeks at top tier tech companies..
Posted from TSR Mobile
Anyway, the highest starting comp package goes to software geeks at top tier tech companies..
Posted from TSR Mobile
On Mobile so +1 to that!
Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Princepieman
1st of all the data on there is largely rubbish, the upper quartile for almost all roles given is much higher than stated and I'm fairy certain if that is wrong then the median is too.
Anyway, the highest starting comp package goes to software geeks at top tier tech companies..
Posted from TSR Mobile
Anyway, the highest starting comp package goes to software geeks at top tier tech companies..
Posted from TSR Mobile
You make these claims that the data is nonsense and you know better, yet I see... No source.
Original post by Abstract_Prism
You make these claims that the data is nonsense and you know better, yet I see... No source.
Thing is about salaries, unless you physically know what different people are making because you're friends (which I do, because I've seen their offers), you'll most likely have access to incomplete data.
Even source wise, glassdoor and the other salary sites have data from 6+ years ago mixed in with recent data. But if you must, take a look at the software engineer data points for Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, all the investment banks, any large blue chip firm etc but set experience level to less than one.
Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Princepieman
Thing is about salaries, unless you physically know what different people are making because you're friends (which I do, because I've seen their offers), you'll most likely have access to incomplete data.Posted from TSR Mobile
What you're saying is:
'Personal experience > Sourced stats'
Original post by Princepieman
Even source wise, glassdoor and the other salary sites have data from 6+ years ago mixed in with recent data. But if you must, take a look at the software engineer data points for Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, all the investment banks, any large blue chip firm etc but set experience level to less than one.Posted from TSR Mobile
You can't just look at the very top companies and investment banks. What I said about median salaries was not incorrect.
And about the sources, that report from the Confederation of British Industry has all of its references in it. Glassdoor and the likes aren't even in there. All the references are reputable.
Original post by Abstract_Prism
What you're saying is:
'Personal experience > Sourced stats'
You can't just look at the very top companies and investment banks. What I said about median salaries was not incorrect.
And about the sources, that report from the Confederation of British Industry has all of its references in it. Glassdoor and the likes aren't even in there. All the references are reputable.
'Personal experience > Sourced stats'
You can't just look at the very top companies and investment banks. What I said about median salaries was not incorrect.
And about the sources, that report from the Confederation of British Industry has all of its references in it. Glassdoor and the likes aren't even in there. All the references are reputable.
Yes, in this case to prove that the upper end of a given range of salaries isn't actually the upper end, knowing the exact grad offer given by the upper range of companies helps.
Again, I'm not discrediting your point, I'm saying the data itself is wrong. The upper quintile of legal salaries is not where the report says it is, because there are a good 60+ firms paying way more than that. So if that upper quartile is wrong, then the median is most likely wrong too.
Hence why you cannot simply say one median is higher than the other when the data is rudimentary at best.
And actually you can just look at top companies if you're trying to disprove the top end of a range.
Posted from TSR Mobile
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Abstract_Prism
>they actually think their degree will be valuable
Go back to /g/
Original post by JQLeitch
Go back to /g/
/g/ is the technology board...
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