Are degrees in the UK value for money?

Andy_L

westernpromise wrote: »

I don't understand why you're so obsessed with engineers. The country needs very few engineers and most people, when you say "British" and "engineer", think "Austin Allegro", i.e. we're not noted for their quality.

Actually I think they tend to think "photocopier repairman" or similar when the word engineer is mentioned

GreatApe

kabayiri wrote: »

Speculate to accumulate I say.

Get a chip design right (as my ex-colleague did), and it can feature in a billion smartphones.

Design big data & search with innovative solutions, and you corner the internet ad space as Google did.

I can't think of too many other fields where you can have such a global impact from a small pool of individuals.

Have you ever heard of a few Estate Agents changing the future?

There's a reason why the Chinese premier chose a few labs in Manchester to visit when he was asked where he wanted to go on his UK visit. It's because advanced materials science has the potential to revolutionise the way we develop the next generation of product.

Think big I say. That's exactly what the engineering pioneers like Maxwell and Brunel did.

Its too late the final solution is to crack intelligence and it looks like that has been done already it just needs a few years go go from general dumb intelligence (google alpha go) to general inventive intelligence and then that is the end of human intelligence being of Much value.

GreatApe

Cakeguts wrote: »

This is what a lot of the parents of these students don't understand. The students are paying for a degree in nothing so that the HR departments can write them off the lists of people they want to interview for a job that doesn't need a degree in anything anyway. The students are paying a small fortune to save the companies interviewing them all.

This is another aspect that I don't understand why parents and teachers are not complaining about. Why does anyone need to pay for a degree in nothing so that the local companies can decide which degrees in nothing they want to inteview the owners of. Surely the schools should be educating to the standard the allows companies to choose not expecting the students to pay for something that the school teachers haven't done in term of education.

I absolutely hate the idea that more university improves wages or the economy as a whole its the complete opposite at this point. We are now at a stage where at least half of those going are adding negative real returns to themselves and the nation.

All because of this toxic feedback loop as using degrees as very basic filters
The more people that go to university the more non university jobs can ask for degrees due to the surplus of grads.

In many ways the old o levels kids did at 15 acted in the same way simple filters to gauge some ability and interest. Now its degrees that do that only its cost the kids 7 extra years and £60,000 for close to nowt.

It seems so obvious and so clear I don't see why people find it so hard to understand. Maybe I push it too far in arguing virtually all degrees are useless but clearly at least 50+% are. If university numbers dropped by 50% that would improve the productivity and wealth of the nation. Both by the kids going from consuming to producing and from the university industry letting go of its labor and capital to produce goods and services people want and need.

Cakeguts

GreatApe wrote: »

I absolutely hate the idea that more university improves wages or the economy as a whole its the complete opposite at this point. We are now at a stage where at least half of those going are adding negative real returns to themselves and the nation.

All because of this toxic feedback loop as using degrees as very basic filters
The more people that go to university the more non university jobs can ask for degrees due to the surplus of grads.

In many ways the old o levels kids did at 15 acted in the same way simple filters to gauge some ability and interest. Now its degrees that do that only its cost the kids 7 extra years and £60,000 for close to nowt.

It seems so obvious and so clear I don't see why people find it so hard to understand. Maybe I push it too far in arguing virtually all degrees are useless but clearly at least 50+% are. If university numbers dropped by 50% that would improve the productivity and wealth of the nation. Both by the kids going from consuming to producing and from the university industry letting go of its labor and capital to produce goods and services people want and need.

Put the other way round if only 8% of jobs in the UK need a degree then the other 92% are useless in terms of employment so if they are being sold to the students as a means to improve employment prospects that is not true because they can't if there aren't enough jobs that need degrees.

The problem I have with all of this is that if people want to study for a degree in order to improve their own education regardless of where it leads in terms of employment then that is up to them. However I don't think that degrees in nothing at these rubbish universities are sold that way. I think the implication is that they do improve employment prospects when in actual fact all they do is tell companies who to interview. They don't invent more jobs that need a degree to do them. This is why I usually say that it isn't worth going to a university unless you can get into one of the top 30. I wouldn't want to work for a company that wanted me to pay around £60k to get onto their interview list. It is as if the company is taking bribes.

Sir_Robin

Employers have been spoilt rotten for a long time and as a consequence they have offloaded the responsibility and expense of training to prospective employees via University and that's not going to change anytime soon.

Not going to uni in this country is essentially giving up on your future.
Even if the degrees poor value you need it as you don't want to stand out as exceptionally under qualified.

adindas

GreatApe wrote: »

Maybe I push it too far in arguing virtually all degrees are useless but CLEARLY at least 50+% are

How come you change your stance so quick??

This is what you wrote in Post # 1584

GreatApe wrote: »

ALL universities and subjects* are useless ...

If your controversial idea could not stand here not how could you expect to convince the decision makers in the industries and the government. Also, where did you get the random figure of at least 50+% and you seem to be 100% certain about this. Any link or based on the research you have done??

I agree that some degrees at the universities are less rigorous and useless. Some universities here in the UK here should close some of their programs leading to useless degrees. They should focus more on delivering the program and skills needed in this country. You will sometimes see people with MBA degree, people with Master's degree in Business and Management are stacking item on the shelves of major chain supermarkets. People with degrees in sport management become caddies, receptionists the jobs that do not need degree at all while their managers do not have degrees at all. If you talk to night minicab drivers you might find some of them might have degrees. If you know them you will sometimes find that some of them with degrees are living on benefit.

kabayiri

GreatApe wrote: »

Its too late the final solution is to crack intelligence and it looks like that has been done already it just needs a few years go go from general dumb intelligence (google alpha go) to general inventive intelligence and then that is the end of human intelligence being of Much value.

I worked in AI. They have been advertising the 'dawn of a new age' for years now.

I understand why. If you don't self promote you don't get funding.

AI may make some significant advances, but I feel confident it will fall flat on it's backside along the way a number of times.

Even if someone does perfect it, they will take the opportunity to max out their profit before sharing the tech elsewhere. It could even lead to more division, not less.

Cakeguts

Sir_Robin wrote: »

Employers have been spoilt rotten for a long time and as a consequence they have offloaded the responsibility and expense of training to prospective employees via University and that's not going to change anytime soon.

Not going to uni in this country is essentially giving up on your future.
Even if the degrees poor value you need it as you don't want to stand out as exceptionally under qualified.

The problem with this is that employers are not stupid. They do know which degrees from which universities are not worth anything. So if you have a poor value degree you now stand out as being incapable of getting into anywhere better which is why there are so many graduates working in jobs that need only minimal training. So getting a degree works both ways. If it is a degree in nothing you are not going to ever get a graduate level job because those only go to the people with degrees from top universities. But not only that everyone knows that you have got a degree in nothing that is worthless so they can put you into the category of stupid students who are not worth employing in any job that couldn't have been done straight after GCSEs. That useless degree will be on every application form that you fill up and it allows them to put these students into the unemployable category for any decent job.

You are not going to stand out as exceptionally under qualified so much as you can be put into the category of not employable because of the university that you went to. People need to be more careful about where they apply to.

There are only about 30 universities that are worth going to. The con of everyone needs to go to university only works because the students who get less than 3 As at A level are not intelligent enough to work out that a degree makes no difference to the actual job they will get. They will not get a job that needs a degree to do it because there are so few of those. So if they are not going to get a job that needs a degree to do it they don't need a degree.

All of these jobs where the HR department are using the degrees as a way of sorting out who to interview are non graduate level jobs. You could do all of them after A levels. Some of them you could do with just GCSEs. The employers are not going to pick someone for a job that needs a "real" degree who has a degree in nothing. If none of these people had degrees the same people would get the jobs.

The only way this is going to stop is if people who have less than AAA at A level don't go to university and go to work straight after school. By following the thinking that you must have a degree or you will give up on your future you are agreeing to pay companies a £60k bribe.

Cakeguts

Actually the more I think about the HR departments using degrees the worse it gets. If you have a degree in nothing from a rubbish university you could be put into their category of never interviewed. As that degree is then with you for life every job you go for could be based on that category regardless of how well you have done in your job or how much work experience you have. So you could be stuck for life because of where you went to university. Thinking about it like this makes me think that if you don't get 3 As for A level what you really must not do is go to any university so that you can't get categorised for the kind of work you will be interviewed for because of your degree.

It would be worth either doing an apprenticeship or just going straight into a job because then the criteria that you are likely to be judged on would be different and you wouldn't have that rubbish degree in nothing pulling you down all the time.

westernpromise

Jackmydad wrote: »

The Allegro had it's faults, but it was a belated attempt by an already failing industry to keep going. There was no money for new investment.

It was, for all it's failings, a better car than would have been designed by someone with a degree in golf management, or any of the other similar degrees on offer.

I'm all for "free" selective education of the best students, and raising, not lowering standards.

That sounds like a very accurate description of the Allegro: a car engineered by someone who did a slightly better job than a gold management graduate would have done. What a ringing endorsement! Although the golf guy, who would think about design, would probably have known not to give it a square steering wheel.