Do graduates who "end up" working at Tesco/McDonalds etc ever become successful?

There's this age old stereotype that anyone with a university degree who works at Tesco or McDonalds is seen as a failure and doomed for life. It's risen in prominence in the past 20 or so years with Tony Blair encouraging as many 18 year olds as possible to go to university. The consequence of that is that there have become more graduates than graduate jobs available, and inevitably this has meant that some graduates will end up working in jobs that they are overqualified for, even if they tried looking for work more suited to their ability.

A proportion of these will end up working in low skilled dead end jobs with low pay, where opportunities for progression are nonexistent. For a recently graduated person, this could be their worst nightmare, having worked so hard only to find their degree was a waste of time and money. For others, they might have the luxuries of living rent free with their parents that they can celebrate earning more money than ever by doing something less stressful than studying for hours on end.

The thing is that at some point, these "Mickey Mouse" graduates will need to find better paying work since their parents will not be around to support them forever. Some graduates never realise this and end up having to live in houseshares for the rest of their life with other "failed" citizens, but are there any who eventually become successful in some way or another, whether that's:

- Starting their own successful business
- Working extra hard in their low-skilled role, that they progress to a supervisory or managerial position
- Finding a good job in the sector they graduated in years after doing so
- Finding a good job in a different sector, potentially earning even more than they could have done if they had used their degree

In other words, are there many real-life examples of students who pass their degree, but then go on to work a low-pay low-skilled dead-end job for 3 or more years before eventually finding something with better prospects, and continually progressing in that role?

Reply 1

Suybi

Original post by Peter187

There's this age old stereotype that anyone with a university degree who works at Tesco or McDonalds is seen as a failure and doomed for life. It's risen in prominence in the past 20 or so years with Tony Blair encouraging as many 18 year olds as possible to go to university. The consequence of that is that there have become more graduates than graduate jobs available, and inevitably this has meant that some graduates will end up working in jobs that they are overqualified for, even if they tried looking for work more suited to their ability.
A proportion of these will end up working in low skilled dead end jobs with low pay, where opportunities for progression are nonexistent. For a recently graduated person, this could be their worst nightmare, having worked so hard only to find their degree was a waste of time and money. For others, they might have the luxuries of living rent free with their parents that they can celebrate earning more money than ever by doing something less stressful than studying for hours on end.
The thing is that at some point, these "Mickey Mouse" graduates will need to find better paying work since their parents will not be around to support them forever. Some graduates never realise this and end up having to live in houseshares for the rest of their life with other "failed" citizens, but are there any who eventually become successful in some way or another, whether that's:
- Starting their own successful business
- Working extra hard in their low-skilled role, that they progress to a supervisory or managerial position
- Finding a good job in the sector they graduated in years after doing so
- Finding a good job in a different sector, potentially earning even more than they could have done if they had used their degree
In other words, are there many real-life examples of students who pass their degree, but then go on to work a low-pay low-skilled dead-end job for 3 or more years before eventually finding something with better prospects, and continually progressing in that role?

To be honest that is my biggest fear as I will be investing more than£40K for a degree and end up doing things that even do not require these qualifications ☹️

Reply 2

Peter187

You'd be surprised but many more graduates end up working menial jobs than you think. It all comes down to the fact that there are far more of those jobs around than jobs at graduate level, or even A-level.

Unless the government introduces a cap on university student numbers, I can't see that changing anytime soon.

Reply 3

ollielee

Yes. Firstly I think it's a mistake to deride working at McDonalds or Tesco as "dead end" jobs. I worked there for 18 months and got promoted to a shift leader while I was there, and the opportunities to move up into managing stores or move to head office/corporate roles, as well as do apprenticeships paid for by the company, are actually really good. The hourly salary wasn't as bad as you'd think with other perks. For some more context to my story: I graduated with a 1st in Sociology from Bristol University, decided to take a year out after uni and got a job at Tesco while I decided what I wanted to do. I realised I wanted to enter the tech industry and starting working towards that when Covid hit so I was battling both a career change and a terrible job market. It took a long time but 18 months later I got my first job in tech as a product manager - still there now 3 1/2 years later, doing very well and earning a very good salary. There's definitely an argument to be made for choosing a degree that I don't use, but a) I actually do use it in many of the soft skills like communication/empathy aspects of my role (research skills too), and b) I chose to do that degree because I liked the subject, not because I wanted to use it when I graduated (and that is a massive privilege to have). So it's partly up to new students in choosing their degree to have some foresight on their end goal, if that is a concern.