Are degrees in the UK value for money?

Cakeguts

Windofchange wrote: »

Well what do you want to assume my pay would have been without my degree from say age 21 - 36? Then you can make some assumptions regarding how that might have increased, and how that might equate to my current pay which is slightly north of 50k, and has been around that point for a good few years. If you wanna take non graduate me for the last 5 years at 20 - 25k per year to be generous? Graduate me at 50 - 55k per year. There is a 150k or so difference straight away without thinking about the 10 years preceding that. If we are to believe that you earned 100k per year from your job, what would you have earned being a cashier in a bank and then trying to work your way up to management? 100k as opposed to 15 - 20k per year. Makes you some £800,000 better off for doing a degree (exclude taxes etc). Looking at figures like this, does this make university a bad choice for you or the taxpayer who have more than recouped their outlay on our degrees? What am I paying at the moment, some 10 grand of tax a year? My student loan is fully repaid and I'm self funding my masters.

As for my credit card debt - there are a multitude of reasons for that, some frivolous, some not. Having a debt doesn't equate to being poor / stupid if that is what you are getting at. £1500 or so left to pay and then it'll be gone. It's parked on 0% for another 2 years (36 month initial offer), so there's no rush, hence taking my time. I could pay it off tomorrow if I needed to. I've had a great time with it, squandered some of it, spent some of it wisely / invested in my future. How many people in the UK at large do you suppose you would find with no debt? How will those half million pound mortgage debts look if prices start to fall rapidly? Consumer credit card use and things like PCP on cars is going through the roof. I think you will probably find I am at the more sensible / well off end of things than your average punter on the highstreet.

Recent article suggests a graduate could be some £500,000 better off than a non-graduate:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/11744118/Graduates-earn-500000-more-than-non-graduates.html

There's 500,000 reasons for someone to go to uni!

The point is that with a good degree from a top university this is probably true. The problem is that for the vast majority of students it isn't. You are not going to earn this much more if the only job you can get after your finance course is stacking shelves in a supermarket or working on the tills. There are only about 30 universities where you can get the kind of job in finance which will lead to this kind of pay. You can't get the entry level job if you haven't been to the right kind of university.

There are about 30 universities which offer degrees giving graduates good pay. The others offer nothing except jobs for university staff and money into the local economy. The problem is that schools and all the other people with vested interests don't tell the students which courses they need to do at which universities to get the degrees that lead to these better paid jobs. They are all told to go to university so that the school can advertise on its league tables how many of its students got a university place. They don't care about the students they only care about the their teaching jobs.

Cakeguts

kabayiri wrote: »

I have a lot of time for this argument personally. But it feels like you are swimming against the tide.

I think the cost of borrowing money is generally too cheap as well, but the concensus is against me there as well.

Really, we need a few entrepreneurial 'blackhats'; the kind who can conjure up the next Google/Amazon/Ebay/AirBnb etc; and the rest who can help support the visionaries to translate ideas into profitable UK endeavour.

I think we squander too much degree money on low grade activity. But....ultimately, I have to support any decision DD makes.

Because they will carry the risks of their decisions going forward.

The huge problem is that it is the students going to university now doing useless degrees and the apprentices and the people who went straight to work who will unltimately be the people who pay for the useless degrees at university when in 30 years the unpaid loans are written off. They will be the taxpayers who pay for these loans. So there is a huge financial time bomb waiting for today's young earners in about 30 years time when all these loans start to be written off. At that point people who haven't been to university will be paying for those that did.

GreatApe

Windofchange wrote: »

I'm not really sure I understand much past the I'm not belittling you bit. As per my post, I have a lot more than a bit of a state funded pension. I have a private pension accumulated through 8 years in a FTSE 100 that is worth 10's of thousands, and am accumulating a third pension within the NHS currently. So, upon retirement as it stands I will have a full state pension entitlement, a large (I'm hoping well into 6 figures) private pot, and also a NHS pension scheme that will be paying out about 3/4 of my final salary, which today if I were at retirement age would be around £30k per annum. How is that not not notably pulling ahead of someone who will just get £600 a month in state pension? I'll likely be a higher rate taxpayer based on pension income alone!

Add to all this, without my degree I would have been earning significantly less over the past 16 years or so than I have been. As per the above, what do you reckon I would have earned doing a 9-5 as an office admin or working the tills as compared to what I have done? If I go on the agenda for change NHS pay scale - non professional roles are earning around 15 - 22k per annum. Professional (Band 5) starts around £25k and then heads up to £100k at the top end. For the last 7 years or so, I have been earning dramatically more than non graduates, and recently in the past two or so around 25 - 30k per annum more than our admin ladies. This gap will only get bigger as I (hopefully) get higher up the pay scale. How many 100's of thousands more than someone stuck as a non-professional will I have earned in 30 years time?

As above, this is all n=1 and useless in proving any sort of cause and effect from degrees. In my n=1, doing a degree was 100% worthwhile for me, doing a masters will be 100% worthwhile as it will allow me to go for more senior posts, and doing all of that will have been 100% worth it for the taxpayer as they have more than had their investment returned to them over the years, and will continue to do so. I'm sure you have a story of an old mate of a mate who did a degree who is now an alcoholic and sleeps under a bridge somewhere in Wolverhampton. None of this proves either side of the argument.

So, you either present some sort of argument based on data applicable across all grads or non grads, or you continue with anecdotes and stories about your friends and relatives. If you think that giving everyone 60k not to go to university is better for them, then I can present you with a whole load of data that proves grads earn well into six figures more than their non-grad counterparts over a lifetime. Shock horror, a lot of these grads will also buy houses and benefit from house price inflation as well as a bigger earning potential. This is not a binary choice - uni or house.

Whatever your job is, it would exist if we send 50% of the kids to university or 5% to university

If we send 50% to university the requirement for the job is that you have to have a degree. If we send 5% to university the job would not require a degree

Windofchange

GreatApe wrote: »

Whatever your job is, it would exist if we send 50% of the kids to university or 5% to university

If we send 50% to university the requirement for the job is that you have to have a degree. If we send 5% to university the job would not require a degree

So then you would be unable to fill 45% of the vacancies and a lot of people would get very sick. Look, I agree with you that there are plenty of university courses out there that needn't exist. They are a bit of a way for someone who doesn't know what they want to do with life to go and do some study and find themselves. I personally don't feel there is any great evil in this, but can see the opposing argument of wasting money etc etc.

I'm not a nurse, but if we take nursing as a profession, back in the post war years and slightly after it probably was a reasonably low skilled profession. It was following directions, wiping bottoms, cleaning wounds etc etc. You didn't need a degree. What happened though? As the health service has evolved, nurses, physios, SLT's etc have taken on a lot more responsibilities that would previously not have been considered in their scope of practice. This has meant that newly qualified staff have needed to be at a much higher level. The level of knowledge is far greater and hence the move towards degree level entry. I think it would be incredibly eye opening for you to see what junior grade allied health professionals do in terms of life saving / endangering practice.

So, if you cut nursing places for instance tonight and say well tough luck you have to give apprenticeships, what happens? You end up either having to dumb down roles and fill the gaps with more doctors / consultants, or you need to do exactly what you would have done at uni in a hospital setting. Please stop assuming that you can learn nursing in 3 weeks with a bit of effort.

You can't just magic up a load of doctors and consultants (15 years training) to fill the voids, and training teenagers on the job is not possible for reasons I have already stated. So, in other words, the need for my job would still exist but who would fill it? As per previous posts, should you fall ill would you want the work experience kid fiddling with your medicine / machines or someone who has reached an assessed level of competence from university?

Things have changed. I am agreeing with you that there are too many degrees, and there is bound to be some waste amongst that, but you can't hope to be taken seriously saying that only 5% of kids should go to uni?

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

Yes couldn't even apply without a degree
They took in about two hundred grads that year (at about a dozen sites)

From the looks of things the HR Ladies hadn't a clue what they were doing. There were everything from oxford electrical engineers to grads from universities I had never heard of doing some oddly named degrees. From what in could gather their aim was to put these people into middle and lower management positions. I worked in various part of the business but mostly in the R&D labs

In hindsight things are worse than they appear.
Not only did they hire 200 grads who did not need to be grads
But they also by that decision displaced promoting 200 of their employees internally

So not only has the university bubble cost huge amounts in debt and lost earnings
It has also cut off a lot of working your way up Jobs

Fortunately when the recession hit they wanted to make some redundancies and I was very happy to volunteer leaving with 6 months pay I was planning to leave anyway so that was a nice bonus.

Yeh so you needed a degree to do your job. Of course you decided it wasn't for you so you left but that role would have to have been filled by someone else and your company requires a degree. Students have no option but to do a degree. You say that degrees are unnecessary for your role which i believe.

The issue is we are in a system where we have effectively been brainwashed into requiring degrees for roles that can be done with GCSE/Alevels.

you have provided some evidence that a degree is not required for doing most jobs. I am surprised most have ignored that. all i hear from the other side is that its required blah blah blah. Well of course it is required, its because HR says so!!!!

economic

Cakeguts wrote: »

The huge problem is that it is the students going to university now doing useless degrees and the apprentices and the people who went straight to work who will unltimately be the people who pay for the useless degrees at university when in 30 years the unpaid loans are written off. They will be the taxpayers who pay for these loans. So there is a huge financial time bomb waiting for today's young earners in about 30 years time when all these loans start to be written off. At that point people who haven't been to university will be paying for those that did.

Whilst the smarter people who went to the top unis who become CEOs, bankers, hedge fund managers, etc etc will have nicely hidden all their wealth away from the taxes. And good for them.

So the education system will cause the poor/lower middle classes to be even poorer in 30 years as they will be the easiest to tax. Nice.

Cakeguts

economic wrote: »

Whilst the smarter people who went to the top unis who become CEOs, bankers, hedge fund managers, etc etc will have nicely hidden all their wealth away from the taxes. And good for them.

So the education system will cause the poor/lower middle classes to be even poorer in 30 years as they will be the easiest to tax. Nice.

It is the law of unintended consequences of someone's "good idea" that the people who are suffering under the "everyone should be able to go to university" are the students who can't get 3As at A level and worst of all the students from poor backgrounds who can't get 3 As at A levels because they don't have parents who can afford to pay for them to do another course after their degree so that they can get more than an entry level job for someone with only A levels.

If you come from a poor background where your parents didn't go to university you have got no chance at all of getting the information that there are only about 30 universities where a degree is likely to make a difference to your job and to avoid going to any of the others. You have no chance of being told not to study fashion, media studies, journalism, performing arts, drama etc. No one is going to help you find an apprenticeship or a job with training because your school wants you to go to university so that your teachers can keep their jobs. They are not interested in the fact that you are going to finish up stacking shelves in a supermarket after spending 3 years at university making yourself increasing more unemployable for the entry level jobs that you are only going to be able to get after your useless degree that isn't worth anything because the university doesn't offer "real" degrees only degrees for non academic students.

When you think that a degree is an academic qualification and some universities offer places to non academic students it is easy to see what a mess someone's "good idea" has got university education into.

There are 1000s of students who are going to have their futures ruined by going to university. Most of them will come from poor backgrounds and backgrounds where there parents did not go to to university. Not going to university is not a problem not being able to advise a student because none of the information they need is available is. It means that students from educated backgrounds have parents who know which universities to avoid and which subjects to avoid. So what happens is that the students whose parents didn't go to university end up in all the dud universities because they don't know they are duds studying rubbish courses. How does that help them?

What is needed is to reduce the number of universities and to bring back the polytechnics and technical colleges that offer courses to non academic students. Currently there is nothing for them apart from useless university courses.

Cakeguts

Windofchange wrote: »

So then you would be unable to fill 45% of the vacancies and a lot of people would get very sick. Look, I agree with you that there are plenty of university courses out there that needn't exist. They are a bit of a way for someone who doesn't know what they want to do with life to go and do some study and find themselves. I personally don't feel there is any great evil in this, but can see the opposing argument of wasting money etc etc.

I'm not a nurse, but if we take nursing as a profession, back in the post war years and slightly after it probably was a reasonably low skilled profession. It was following directions, wiping bottoms, cleaning wounds etc etc. You didn't need a degree. What happened though? As the health service has evolved, nurses, physios, SLT's etc have taken on a lot more responsibilities that would previously not have been considered in their scope of practice. This has meant that newly qualified staff have needed to be at a much higher level. The level of knowledge is far greater and hence the move towards degree level entry. I think it would be incredibly eye opening for you to see what junior grade allied health professionals do in terms of life saving / endangering practice.

So, if you cut nursing places for instance tonight and say well tough luck you have to give apprenticeships, what happens? You end up either having to dumb down roles and fill the gaps with more doctors / consultants, or you need to do exactly what you would have done at uni in a hospital setting. Please stop assuming that you can learn nursing in 3 weeks with a bit of effort.

You can't just magic up a load of doctors and consultants (15 years training) to fill the voids, and training teenagers on the job is not possible for reasons I have already stated. So, in other words, the need for my job would still exist but who would fill it? As per previous posts, should you fall ill would you want the work experience kid fiddling with your medicine / machines or someone who has reached an assessed level of competence from university?

Things have changed. I am agreeing with you that there are too many degrees, and there is bound to be some waste amongst that, but you can't hope to be taken seriously saying that only 5% of kids should go to uni?

Why do we need to have all nurses get degrees? The people who clean the patients and hand out the medication don't need a degree. There are lots of jobs that don't actually need a degree. As long as someone is doing the more difficult jobs and they have been to a real university the others changing dressings etc don't need one.

So why not have standards of nursing where the people with responsibility need degrees and the rest don't? It would mean that all nurses had real degrees from real universities and all other jobs were learned on the job.

GreatApe

Windofchange wrote: »

So then you would be unable to fill 45% of the vacancies and a lot of people would get very sick. Look, I agree with you that there are plenty of university courses out there that needn't exist. They are a bit of a way for someone who doesn't know what they want to do with life to go and do some study and find themselves. I personally don't feel there is any great evil in this, but can see the opposing argument of wasting money etc etc.

I'm not a nurse, but if we take nursing as a profession, back in the post war years and slightly after it probably was a reasonably low skilled profession. It was following directions, wiping bottoms, cleaning wounds etc etc. You didn't need a degree. What happened though? As the health service has evolved, nurses, physios, SLT's etc have taken on a lot more responsibilities that would previously not have been considered in their scope of practice. This has meant that newly qualified staff have needed to be at a much higher level. The level of knowledge is far greater and hence the move towards degree level entry. I think it would be incredibly eye opening for you to see what junior grade allied health professionals do in terms of life saving / endangering practice.

So, if you cut nursing places for instance tonight and say well tough luck you have to give apprenticeships, what happens? You end up either having to dumb down roles and fill the gaps with more doctors / consultants, or you need to do exactly what you would have done at uni in a hospital setting. Please stop assuming that you can learn nursing in 3 weeks with a bit of effort.

You can't just magic up a load of doctors and consultants (15 years training) to fill the voids, and training teenagers on the job is not possible for reasons I have already stated. So, in other words, the need for my job would still exist but who would fill it? As per previous posts, should you fall ill would you want the work experience kid fiddling with your medicine / machines or someone who has reached an assessed level of competence from university?

How did the country manage 30 years ago?
And we could spend a lot more on healthcare if we spend a lot less on media studies

Things have changed. I am agreeing with you that there are too many degrees, and there is bound to be some waste amongst that, but you can't hope to be taken seriously saying that only 5% of kids should go to uni?

I would not have a hard cap at 5% I think that is perhaps toward the lower limit so something between 5-10 percent. 5% of the working age population is a lot of people it is close to 2 million people.

You can also strengthen standards at lower levels.

Why have a 3 year photography degree for £60k at a university why not have a triple A-Level in photography so the kids spend 16-18 learning what they would do at university but for free. Maybe even have colleges award them as undergraduate degrees. Why not have a triple A level in nursing where the kids learn nursing full time age 16-18? Maybe even call it a degree rather than a triple A level

Cakeguts

Regarding nursing degrees https://digital.ucas.com/courses/details?coursePrimaryId=569ab88d-1ad6-69e3-9ac3-7ccb064e74d0&courseOptionId=62febdf6-32d7-8e27-1e7e-2700f6332390 this one needs BBB at A level that is the equivalent of the 3 O levels so nursing degrees are not the level of traditionals degrees they are technical college level. If we had technical colleges of the standard of the old ones nursing could be done at those.

Many of our nurses are educated to the level of 3 old A levels. There is no point in anyone needing to go to university to do a nursing degree this could all be done as an apprenticeship. They are educated to the same level as they always were or probably not quite as well. This is what happens when you dumb down you don't realise that everything is dumbed down.

Sending nurses to university instead of technical college is a huge waste of time and money. Nursing could be done as an apprenticeship. There are apprenticeships where you need As at A level.