90% of the jobs do not require a degree....

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In hindsight my uni journey was more about learning how to be independent and learning how to talk to real life people. I was a social recluse back when I was in school (and obviously unemployable with that sort of characteristic) Now I'm passing interviews, internships and networking with people from all sorts of backgrounds with relative ease. UoE honed me well I suppose. I'm grateful :cool:

what is your degree and what are you working as now?

Reply 21

ben.anderson

I am not against university education, I believe its the best way to educate in areas such as doctors, medicine, etc.. The problem is Labour under Tony Blair thought it was I great idea to send pretty much everyone, which now means the degree has became less “important” as everyone has one. Unfortunately not everyone can have a “high paid job”.

Look, I absolutely did awful at school which I regret and is my own fault – I did so bad I wouldn't even be allowed to get into a uni. However I now run a web design business making money, while others get in 30k-40k of debt and have not even started there adult working life.

I believe its morally wrong that everyone has to get into all this debt, before they have even started work. Most jobs don't need a degree, employers just want them now because well.. they might aswell as they are so “available”.

I personally would rather employ someone who has gone out there dealt with customers, done the jobs others deem as “a poor persons job” and have the passion and interest. I cant stand these people who come in with all these bits of paper with masters degrees or whatever they are and demand a good wage straight away. I could easily get someone with a so called “degree” but many of them have never done a proper days work in their life. I would rather train someone up who's had experience doing hard-work.

Reply 22

thinkecon

Original post by TaintedLight

I'm really great that you feel you developed over your time at UoE. Most graduates do feel the same way.

However... the question I have is whether university is the BEST way for students to achieve this sort of development?

For instance, why not instead organise rotating internships in the real world, or travel the world for three years, or start a business with the support and guidance of mentors (in the same way you might write a dissertation with the support of professors), or any countless number of other things...

For me, I believe university can justify its cost in some very special cases like yours. But even then, I don't believe it can justify its opportunity cost: the wonderful stuff you could get up to with £30k tuition fees + earning £30k in a low effort job for three years.

Or imagine, rather than ditching university, universities were to change their purpose. Rather than boring and often useless academia they offered a diversity of practical experiences that its students actually cared passionately about. I believe this would be an infinitely superior experience for students, university staff and the economy.

Reply 23

Joinedup

Original post by hezzlington

My degree (Geophysics) is a niche subject and pretty much every module I've taken from second year onwards is a module that is totally relevant to employment (theory and practical based knowledge e.g. how to operate equipment used in industry) and without intimate knowledge of the topics you would struggle to be successful in your workplace. I guess this falls in the 10% category.

operating industry standard equipment sounds like the sort of thing you might have learned by doing an apprenticeship in the olden days tbh... the burden of training costs seem to have shifted off the employer and onto the student.

Reply 24

CON5P1RACY K1D

That's what an apprenticeship is for

Reply 25

Miss Maddie

10% of jobs (the best high paying jobs) do require a degree.

Reply 26

Drewski

Original post by Madeline_H95

10% of jobs (the best high paying jobs) do require a degree.

And what are they?

And if you take medical or law jobs out of the equation (because not everybody wants to do those, regardless of how much they could earn) what are you left with?

Reply 27

username738914

Original post by Drewski

And what are they?

And if you take medical or law jobs out of the equation (because not everybody wants to do those, regardless of how much they could earn) what are you left with?

High finance (IB, trading, AM etc), oil and gas engineering, software engineering/development, strategy/management/technical consulting, etc.

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Reply 28

Miss Maddie

Original post by Drewski

And what are they?

And if you take medical or law jobs out of the equation (because not everybody wants to do those, regardless of how much they could earn) what are you left with?

Medical and law are some of the highest paying jobs so you can't just remove them to make things work for you. It's true for engineering, accounting, and science. Google the top 25 paying jobs and count how many require a degree. All of them do.

Reply 29

Drewski

Original post by Princepieman

High finance (IB, trading, AM etc), oil and gas engineering, software engineering/development, strategy/management/technical consulting, etc

There's no technical reason why those in bold need a degree, we've just got used to them being given to degree holders.

That's the point of this thread. It's saying that if degrees didn't exist almost every single job on the planet would still function perfectly adequately, because only a fraction of them actually need a degree.

Original post by Madeline_H95

I'm not saying they're not, but a large part of the population have zero interest in either medicine or law. And my point about taking them out was that in any of those lists you get about 10 different fields of medicine listed individually. If you just say "medical" as one, then that list of top paying jobs becomes very different looking.

My general point is that a lot of jobs only say you need a degree because people have got used to having a degree. The overwhelming majority of jobs out there require no such level of education.

Reply 30

Wewuz Hebrews

Original post by littlenorthernlass

It's to narrow down the very, very, very large pool of applicants.

As true as that is, is 3 years and 27+ k of debt really the most efficient way to stop HR departments being swamped?

Reply 31

Drewski

Original post by Wewuz Hebrews

As true as that is, is 3 years and 27+ k of debt really the most efficient way to stop HR departments being swamped?

And it's not as if they aren't being swamped seeing as the world and it's mother have degrees now.

Reply 32

Wewuz Hebrews

Original post by Drewski

And it's not as if they aren't being swamped seeing as the world and it's mother have degrees now.

This too, it clearly doesn't even work.

Reply 33

SmashConcept

Original post by thinkecon

100% this. If you don't develop and mature significantly between the ages of 18-22 then you're basically a failure at life IMO. You will do that whether you work, study, do an apprenticeship or pretty much just stay at home and download porn. They're the first three years of your adult life. Failing to gain a decent amount of maturity during that time is like failing to learn to talk during the first three years of your actual life.

Reply 34

llys

Original post by thinkecon

I think you may find this interesting (tangentially): https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/students/
I really like the idea and am following this development with interest.

Reply 35

thinkecon

Original post by llys

I think you may find this interesting (tangentially): https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/students/
I really like the idea and am following this development with interest.

Wow, this is fantastic!

The issue I see is scalability. An education like this is massively empowering (at least, I suspect it is) but also requires serious resources to power it (vs. mass education which is super low cost).

But this (at least in my mind) is inevitably the future.

Students, lecturers, employers all readily acknowledge that there is no direct spillover from education to the workplace - no one actually thinks a degree is useful in the real world (beyond a very niche set of disciplines).

The system will naturally fall apart as technology rapidly automates mechanical jobs, exacerbating graduate unemployment... when it becomes understood that a degree does not help you secure a job, the system will have to refocus to help build real skills and students will look elsewhere for opportunities to build those real skills.

Reply 36

Dalek1099

Original post by HucktheForde

Right this thread is in chat because its meant to be a casual chat thread only. trollings are tolerated.

I was having a conversation with my manager and she said "Actually 90% of the jobs do not require a degree". Most graduates can be trained on the job and nothing they learn from university will ever be used in their field.

Exception for few profession that requires accreditation like lawyers, doctors, engineers, biochemist etc etc ( quite obviously)

If that is the case, what is the point of going to uni then?? why would employers put out ads with "2:1 and above" on "normal" jobs.

Most of the employers who put ads asking for 2:1 and above on a degree are just doing it sort to through all the applicants and this is precisely why its important to go to University as since everyone has a degree you are going to have a lot more trouble getting a good job.

I think the problem is University degrees are not applied enough they aren't really that related to jobs except in a few cases like Medicine, most graduates will not have a clue how to do graduate jobs as their degree hasn't prepared them for these jobs this is often indicated in the title of the degree like does a Maths degree prepare you for a Banking role it will give you some of the skills but you still really don't learn how to do that job and thats why a lot of employers want experience as well or have to train a lot of the graduates from scratch as their skills are often not even that relevant to the job(its kinda of like Pythagoras despite being basic C grade Maths is not necessary for 99% of jobs).

Making degrees more applicable would mean that people don't become as educated though as what they learn generally is of most use in specialist fields and jobs which consist of a very small proportion of jobs.I am interested in lecturing and research so the degree might well be useful to me but I study my degree because its interesting mainly.

Reply 37

ben.anderson

Original post by Madeline_H95

10% of jobs (the best high paying jobs) do require a degree.

So why do you think its a good idea to send 50% of people to Uni if only 10% of jobs need a degree? It all worked a lot better before Tony Blair decided everyone should go...

Reply 38

username1799249

Original post by Princepieman

High finance (IB, trading, AM etc), oil and gas engineering, software engineering/development, strategy/management/technical consulting, etc.

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I thought high finance was about who you know and whether you wore a Saville Row suit. Software development is highly technical but neither Bill Gates or Steve Jobs have / had a degree. Then there are strategy / management / technical types, some of whom will have studied for their trade and some who will have learned on the job and then touted their skills in return for hard cash. To say nothing of many very successful entrepreneurs and business owners.

Reply 39

username738914

Original post by ByEeek

High finance nowadays is becoming more and more quantitative. You have PhDs working on pricing models, quant developers building the software to price securities, algo traders at hedge funds and proprietary trading houses implementing trading algorithms (usually high frequency). Even in the 'normal' High Finance roles you need to be technically sound.

An M&A banker (or hedge fund analyst, or private equity dude) can't do his job unless he knows how to value companies, strategy behind what drives growth, noticing synergies etc. Gets even more complex when you deal with debt or a company undergoing a financial/operational crisis.

So sure, if you're in sales/private banking, knowing a log of rich people helps but you need to be smart enough to handle the day-to-day stuff.. Hence why banks et al, focus on recruiting at the top universities.

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