[drummer]

I've not graduated from my degree yet. In fact I haven't even started but I'm grateful. Last went into a music diploma at my local institute after 6th form knowing 'for sure' I was to become a professional musician. Luckily that course was only 1 year and beforehand I had already failed at an audition for the music degree. Summer last year I finished the diploma and applied again for the degree. Rejected again. So in a way the outcome of my music career was not as expected. I'm not saying this post scares me with the fact that you may be unemployed after graduating, I'm saying just like what everybody else is saying, as well as the hard work and grades, you will also need experience to support that. That's where I failed in music.

[original_username]

(Original post by NB_ide)
bah, another application didn't get through to interviews.
It was only 17k as well - how do adults survive on that? Does everyone live in a shared house these days? I really don't understand what kind of money people live off, it's weird how low wages are. I used to think that 30k was a pretty normal young adult wage, but it seems that 21k is really good going and 30k is an end-of-career level to get to.

Spare a thought for people that slave away for minimum wage. I know they get benefits still like HBA, CBA and working tax credits maybe? But that's because they need them, it is such a pathetic return for your time.

[NB_ide]

(Original post by original_username)
Spare a thought for people that slave away for minimum wage. I know they get benefits still like HBA, CBA and working tax credits maybe? But that's because they need them, it is such a pathetic return for your time.

Yep, it's tragic isn't it. Not even worth doing. One way of looking at how worthwhile a salary is is to compare it to what you'd get if you didn't have a job, or what the real baseline is. It's not £0, of course.

Each month I pay or could pay £250 rent and £140 council tax, both of which would be paid for me by the council if I didn't work - no questions asked (unlike JSA). That's £390, then I could be getting £200 JSA for a while, so £590 total.

I net about £1000 per month, or £400 above benefits, £4800 per year for full time work, essentially. Very strange.

[Londonpie72]

(Original post by NB_ide)
bah, another application didn't get through to interviews.
It was only 17k as well - how do adults survive on that? Does everyone live in a shared house these days? I really don't understand what kind of money people live off, it's weird how low wages are. I used to think that 30k was a pretty normal young adult wage, but it seems that 21k is really good going and 30k is an end-of-career level to get to.

The graduate schemes I have seen range from like £25-30 whereas entry level graduate type jobs range from like £18-23.

[NB_ide]

(Original post by Londonpie72)
The graduate schemes I have seen range from like £25-30 whereas entry level graduate type jobs range from like £18-23.

Yes but in reality not all (or even most?) graduates get a job with "graduate" in the title. I've been rejected from plenty of related jobs that only asked for A levels - competition is fierce even for low-level crap.

I'd like to see some legit figures on graduate employment and earnings but I doubt we'll ever get any. Real stats would completely **** up our grand plan to push every single youth through university, no matter what.

[Londonpie72]

I have been rejected for jobs that paid £18k but now got a job that pays slightly higher.

The thing is graduate schemes that pay high like say 28k attracts so many applicants but even those that pay lower like £18k also attract many applicants maybe not as much as those £28k ones.

I even applied to NHS band 3 finance job and can you imagine they asked for A-levels and then stated degree desirable.

Just keep applying and do not give up I applied for jobs since last year June and only managed to get a job in April. Got invited to interviews and stuff but the feedback I received several times was they found someone with experience or who more closely met their requirement.

As everyone has said experience is nearly as valuable if not more valuable than a degree as nowadays seems everyone has got a degree.

[original_username]

(Original post by NB_ide)
Yep, it's tragic isn't it. Not even worth doing. One way of looking at how worthwhile a salary is is to compare it to what you'd get if you didn't have a job, or what the real baseline is. It's not £0, of course.

Each month I pay or could pay £250 rent and £140 council tax, both of which would be paid for me by the council if I didn't work - no questions asked (unlike JSA). That's £390, then I could be getting £200 JSA for a while, so £590 total.

I net about £1000 per month, or £400 above benefits, £4800 per year for full time work, essentially. Very strange.

Made me laugh listening to radio 1 last week, they were doing a bit on the news section asking whether minimum wage was too little and kept playing what sounded like a lad in his early 20's saying something like " I get minimum wage, thats about 200 odd quid a month, I don't need any more than that, people just need to realise you have to work hard for your money".

Clearly someone with no outgoings other than clothes and booze, can't believe people can be that close minded when it comes to debates like that.

[Clip]

(Original post by original_username)
Made me laugh listening to radio 1 last week, they were doing a bit on the news section asking whether minimum wage was too little and kept playing what sounded like a lad in his early 20's saying something like " I get minimum wage, thats about 200 odd quid a month, I don't need any more than that, people just need to realise you have to work hard for your money".

Clearly someone with no outgoings other than clothes and booze, can't believe people can be that close minded when it comes to debates like that.

The flip side to that is people refusing apprenticeship because they think it's too little. The traditional view of an apprentice is a young person, living at home with no expenses and only getting pocket money; and in return they get training.

[original_username]

(Original post by Clip)
The flip side to that is people refusing apprenticeship because they think it's too little. The traditional view of an apprentice is a young person, living at home with no expenses and only getting pocket money; and in return they get training.

Apprenticeships are being used as cheap labour by more and more employers though where the skills gained aren't that great and the job security is poor. I'm not talking about big firms here. And the people looking to apprenticeships are getting older.

[rlw31]

(Original post by original_username)
Apprenticeships are being used as cheap labour by more and more employers though where the skills gained aren't that great and the job security is poor. I'm not talking about big firms here. And the people looking to apprenticeships are getting older.

This. I've seen apprenticeships for sales assistants at clothes stores and office admin.

[Clip]

(Original post by original_username)
Apprenticeships are being used as cheap labour by more and more employers though where the skills gained aren't that great and the job security is poor. I'm not talking about big firms here. And the people looking to apprenticeships are getting older.

That's because they aren't apprenticeships as anyone would recognise them to be. They're being offered in ridiculous fields where they are completely uneccessary.

Is this the fault of employers, though? All they are doing is following the pattern set by the education system. If tertiary education is offering a mass of degrees in "business" then why is anyone surprised when "business apprenticeships" are being offered. At least the apprentices are getting paid.

You might assume that an apprentice in retail is getting a rough deal. Maybe so.

Well what about this: http://www.fashionretailacademy.ac.u...ion-management

Generations of idiot education policy is the root of the problem here. Policy tells everyone that skilled jobs are in fact graduate jobs, and the hole left by the skilled jobs are then filled by clerical/manual/retail ones - which are the new de facto skilled jobs. Colleges offer qualifications in them - so work experience / apprenticeship is the logical extension.

Is it stupid? Absolutely. But it's not the fault of employers. 20 years ago, an employer offering an apprenticeship in office junioring or working at Monsoon would have been laughed at. No longer.

[original_username]

(Original post by Clip)
That's because they aren't apprenticeships as anyone would recognise them to be. They're being offered in ridiculous fields where they are completely uneccessary.

Is this the fault of employers, though? All they are doing is following the pattern set by the education system. If tertiary education is offering a mass of degrees in "business" then why is anyone surprised when "business apprenticeships" are being offered. At least the apprentices are getting paid.

You might assume that an apprentice in retail is getting a rough deal. Maybe so.

Well what about this: http://www.fashionretailacademy.ac.u...ion-management

Generations of idiot education policy is the root of the problem here. Policy tells everyone that skilled jobs are in fact graduate jobs, and the hole left by the skilled jobs are then filled by clerical/manual/retail ones - which are the new de facto skilled jobs. Colleges offer qualifications in them - so work experience / apprenticeship is the logical extension.

Is it stupid? Absolutely. But it's not the fault of employers. 20 years ago, an employer offering an apprenticeship in office junioring or working at Monsoon would have been laughed at. No longer.

I can't see how education can shoulder the blame for companies getting away with paying people £2.50 per hour. Apprentices are nothing new, they used to be a way of developing and moulding someone into your organisation and still are for firms like national rail, national grid, BT. These are what I would call proper apprenticeships, giving a proper career, promotion opportunities and a decent salary with structured increases.

The new trend of calling something an apprenticeship so you can get someone in to do the work for a fraction of the cost of creating an actual job is a slap in the face to young people. Can't see how that is the fault of Education.

Sorry if I haven't made much sense, I'm tired.

[Clip]

(Original post by original_username)
I can't see how education can shoulder the blame for companies getting away with paying people £2.50 per hour. Apprentices are nothing new, they used to be a way of developing and moulding someone into your organisation and still are for firms like national rail, national grid, BT. These are what I would call proper apprenticeships, giving a proper career, promotion opportunities and a decent salary with structured increases.

The new trend of calling something an apprenticeship so you can get someone in to do the work for a fraction of the cost of creating an actual job is a slap in the face to young people. Can't see how that is the fault of Education.

Sorry if I haven't made much sense, I'm tired.

The things you refer to were apprenticeships under former nationalised industries. Yes, they had structure and opportunity - but were a mirror of employment in those industries as a whole - largely a gravy train.

The majority of apprentices in private employment would not have had half of the job security or progression; but even so - I agree that apprenticeship used to be a much better deal.

The bargain was as follows: I train you in something skilled, and in return you don't get paid much and you do all the dirty work.

Fair enough. So where did it all go wrong?

It seems to me that it went wrong when the education system interfered in this.

Lawyers were essentially apprenticed. They were the first to go. Accountants went too - not even that long ago. After that, it was open season on most trades. They went from being learned in the workplace to being learned in the classroom - all in the name of validating qualifications that had been ironically invented to.....validate qualifications. Hence, the original apprenticeship was devalued for the most part.

The nonsense apprenticeships that you have now are often in fields that are generally unskilled - hence no apprenticeship is really needed. My explanation is that these fields were formerly clerical/unskilled. We're not talking about secretaries or book-keepers here - we're talking about general office administrators and retail workers. These jobs never used to require any qualifications, but qualifications were invented for them over the last 20 years or so. Business degrees used to be for the very high echelons of management - now they're a catch-all category very often taken up by people scared of an Economics degree.

So now that there are qualifications in these fields - it's logically pointless to bar apprenticeship in those same disciplines.

I'll give an example. Let's say there were such a thing as an apprenticeship in working at McDonalds. Not a management programme or anything - just an apprenticeship to work there. Would anyone take that up over a regular job there, paid at the regular wage? I think not - because there would be no perceived value nor advantage. Well, go back 30 years, and that's how these neo-apprenticeships would have been viewed. People would never have gone for an apprenticeship at TopShop or for being an Office Junior - they would not have believed that there was any value there. Somewhere along the line, value had been invented (in the shape of bogus qualifications and the bogus "need" for certification) and some people are now being duped into taking these things up.

Maybe McDonalds is an extreme example, but if a degree in retail management became the norm, it's not too hard to see how people might be convinced that apprenticeship at a retail shop had some value.

Like I say, I don't believe this is led by the employers. There are few things quite as expensive as new, inexperienced, de-motivated staff.

[Regent]

(Original post by Clip)
x

Would +1 you if I could. All very true.

[.:Gamble:.]

(Original post by newts2k)
well done, whats that for?

account manager

for a fancy agency

[Lamps08]

(Original post by NB_ide)
Yep, it's tragic isn't it. Not even worth doing. One way of looking at how worthwhile a salary is is to compare it to what you'd get if you didn't have a job, or what the real baseline is. It's not £0, of course.

Each month I pay or could pay £250 rent and £140 council tax, both of which would be paid for me by the council if I didn't work - no questions asked(unlike JSA). That's £390, then I could be getting £200 JSA for a while, so £590 total.

I net about £1000 per month, or £400 above benefits, £4800 per year for full time work, essentially. Very strange.

Is this available to absolutely anyone? If so then just get a cash in hand job on top surely??

[NB_ide]

(Original post by Lamps08)
Is this available to absolutely anyone? If so then just get a cash in hand job on top surely??

yea it's easily done.

[emi_sarb]

I graduated in June and was unemployed until I finally got a job that I started 2 weeks ago. The job pays £12500 but with the overtime I'm doing it will be probably be nearer £15000. It also only needs GCSEs but it is related to my degree and I can hopefully find something better when I have some experience.

[original_username]

(Original post by emi_sarb)
I graduated in June and was unemployed until I finally got a job that I started 2 weeks ago. The job pays £12500 but with the overtime I'm doing it will be probably be nearer £15000. It also only needs GCSEs but it is related to my degree and I can hopefully find something better when I have some experience.

Well done, a start is a start. Bit like me, been working a month (only 24 hours a week) although I did get work over xmas too.
What's the role?

[rogger_frogger]

(Original post by NB_ide)
by letting me live like a child for even longer and shielding me from the real world.

You are right! I have become frustrated with my degree, too much time spent doing nothing, getting older getting more debt and all the time the people who left after A-Levels are earning.

I also realised that with no experience getting a job at the end is impossible so I switched to a four year sandwich and have been searching for a placement since September. I know with this placement I can make the whole course worth something and really get my foot in the door.

Only thing is with no experience it is proving difficult, but I have been volunteering since October so things are looking up. The only thing volunteering can't help you with is interviews and recruitment processes, and that is where I let myself down.

Anyway, good luck!