Many graduates earn 'paltry returns' for their degree

Too many people with degrees, too many people who take economically uncompetitive subjects. It's an unfavorable unbalance of supply and demand with a predictable result: lots of unemployed graduates with liberal arts degrees who feel entitled to a high-paying career and blame the Tories for everything wrong with their lives.

its also who is offering degrees a good majority of these so called universities offering CCC courses dont give a good outlook for employability with employers wether people want to realize that or not. There needs to be a cap on the amount of degree awarding universities, it should be capped at maximum 50 universities, with 20 elite, 20 mid tier, and then 10 for those who desperately want a degree but cant get in. The system now is so unsustainable all these crap unis that offer little to no value to students or society at the SAME HIGH PRICE. Students need to be more realistically aware of there chances of employment and prospects at London met, and these other former polytechnic dodgy institutions. That would also force universities to weed out some of the useless courses. Just my opinion.

That's not how forums work. Your post raised a matter I wanted to address.



I am unconvinced. There's a difference between saying that people shouldn't take particular degrees as an absolute and saying that it would generally be ill advised from a purely financial perspective to do so. I'm sure that for someone who really loves art history it could be a highly rewarding and worthwhile experience to spend three years studying it at university. They just shouldn't necessarily expect their degree to help them bring in the big bucks afterwards.



I don't think the MP's personal choices bear upon his points about the general trends one way or another.

In fact I think most of this is very much off-point.

Full time employment 4 1/2 years after graduation:-

Oxford 71.3%
Manchester 72.7%
Durham 77.4%
Liverpool John Moores 80.6%
Nottingham Trent 81.5%
Bournemouth 84.9%
Loughborough 85.2%
Harper Adams 89.0%

You could fit the graduates of all gender studies degrees in the uk over the past decade on a single decker bus.

Even if this where true,

ill gladly state that 30% of oxford graduates likely come from households where they may never need to work.

That's an interesting statement. Got a link.?

Do you wish to call the official Higher Education Statistics Agency liars?



Well, that isn't right. There is a small element of truth in you comment but not a lot. The reality is that a lot of Oxford graduates continue in higher education for several years but then do not earn at a level commensurate with what they have foregone to get there.


Oxford is somewhat atypical. The return on many Russell Group arts degrees is poor compared with many more vocational degrees offered by newer universities.

"Many graduates receive "paltry returns" for their degrees despite racking up £50,000 in debt, says the chairman of the Education Select Committee.

Robert Halfon will say in a speech on Monday, that between a fifth and a third of graduates take non-graduate jobs, and that any extra returns for having a degree "vary wildly".

He will also suggest that too many people are studying academic degrees.

University leaders maintain that a degree remains an excellent investment."

FULL STORY: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42923529

What do you make of this issue?

If you're not studying engineering, mathematics, or a classical subject you are wasting your time

Maybe some people want to study an academic degree for reasons other than pursuing a graduate career

How low do you have to go to insult someone’s degree and job?

If you're not studying engineering, mathematics, or a classical subject you are wasting your time

I have insulted nobody. I suggest you read my post again - carefully this time. I merely pointed out that there are not enough graduate level jobs for all the graduates we are turning out, and that many have to settle for the sort of jobs that require no tertiary education at all. It is a simple fact. That you feel pointing out such a state of affairs is an insult says more about you than it does about me.

In the early 1970s about 15% of people studied as undergraduates. The number is now over three times that. Graduate level jobs have not kept pace with demand while we simultaneously import people into the country in vast numbers to fulfil the roles that are difficult to fill from within. Nowadays far more people obtain second degrees than took first degrees in the 1970s. It is no wonder many run up debts that they cannot profit from.