Are degrees in the UK value for money?

chucknorris

Zxcv_Bnm wrote: »

Your maths degree is no more use in this real world example than any other. A lot less if you are dumb enough to imagine there's one "right answer".

Why are you looking at a degree, and also life in such a limited way? My degree (quantity surveying) wasn't so much about learning about quantity surveying, although if you want to look at with with tunnel vision, then yes of course it was. For me, it was much wider than that, it was about learning how to learn, I took so much from my degree, that it gave me the confidence to start businesses and I retired from my profession 10 years after graduating, because I had 'moved on', and not only had I made my first million, but the two businesses that I was running (in my spare time) were each making more than my full time salary. It just wasn't worth working in my profession any more.

john2054

As I said already, it is a waste of money, a BIG waste of money. About the only good thing i got out of the five years and £35k+ i spent at uni, was it kept me out of hospital. Now i can't even get a supermarket or internship or temp job. I could have started my pension now.

Oh yes, and i learnt how to read, and troll internet forums. Was that really worth wasting some of the best years of my life for.

The only reason why degrees are so expensive anyway, is to pay the wages of these over paid lecturers, who only have to show up a few times a week, to read from a powerpoint, and check that the students have read from the reading lists.

I can see the demand, but as i said already, it simply isn't worth it, for the costs of time and effort and money you have to put in. Thankyou.

regprentice

BikingBud wrote: »

#regprentice
So when the employers takes £1500 for your pension pot why do you think this is lost? And why not consider the benefit downstream, what will this extra give you on payout?

Of course your employer wants more, they are offering you £10k a year more, a 20% uplift, guess what that's the reality of life.

I think the final paragraph sums it up, you are content and don't have the motivation to work harder, fine someone else will be along shortly that does.

Someone else did come along. As they manage people in the UK and India this often means they work from 8am until as late as 2am. My employer feels their £10k gross reflected that level of work, i didn't' feel that my £2.5k net reflected it. I frequently work as late as 10.30pm but i draw the line there as that gives me a 14 hour day during busy times which, i wont lie, i struggle to cope with. My employer does not pay overtime.

Interestingly the person who did take that job had their final salary pension capped in 2009 at the wage they earned in that year, and for the extra £1.5k they pay in after this promotion they will not receive a penny more in benefits than they would have received had they not taken the job. Around 1/3 of the companies staff are in the capped final pension scheme though i am not.

I don't think refusing £200 a month to up my workload to potentially an 18 hour day would put me in a minority. Thats potentially turning down as little as £9 quid net for an extra 4 hours work per day assuming the hours are consistent on a weekday basis.

adindas

Zxcv_Bnm wrote: »

Your maths degree is no more use in this real world example than any other. A lot less if you are dumb enough to imagine there's one "right answer".

I do not have a math degree but I could easily tell that you have a gross misunderstanding about math. Your view about math might be the one you have learnt from your teacher on GCSE or A-Level.

Higher level math are much more complicated then you would have thought.

You see robotics, guided missile, satellite tracking, space shuttle, etc part of calculation to determine their position in the space, space coordinate is all about math.

Also, high level math not only provide an exact answer, but many of them are about estimation, probability and statistics, simulation, boolean, cracking code.

Binary option for technical analysis in financial market, calculating probability of winning in a game like gambling is all about math. Alan Turing a mathematician who were cracking the code on WW2 is one of a good example for his.

In fact you will not be able to separate math with probability and statistics, simulation, engineering, higher level economics and finance, computer science.

Jancrow4

University degrees could mostly be completed in much shorter timescales. Some students only have to attend over two days or less than 10 hours a week.
They are strung out over three or four years because of the annual income each student brings in. It is not fair to burden students , and their parents with such debt when their degrees could often be completed in under two years.
Some degrees, like medicine, may need the longer timescales because of practical inputs and a degree of experience being necessary, but the more lightweight subjects where it's more about personal research could easily be wrapped up a lot faster.

GreatApe

The problem with the UK university system is that the money is only offered for higher education.

The same sum should also be offered to 18 year olds to use as a deposit on a house or to put into their pension pots.

If there was this choice then 9/10 students would decide university is not good value for money and that they would rather use the sum as a deposit to buy a house.

I even know one person who applied for university took the grants with the view of never actually going to the course. Who the public were down £9k on his tuition plus maybe £6k on his living loans. Luckily the university kicked him out in the first year I thought they'd have kept him on for the full 3 years to claim £9k off the government each year for him. Still that was £16k a pure waste for someone working the university system

GreatApe

Jancrow4 wrote: »

University degrees could mostly be completed in much shorter timescales. Some students only have to attend over two days or less than 10 hours a week.
They are strung out over three or four years because of the annual income each student brings in. It is not fair to burden students , and their parents with such debt when their degrees could often be completed in under two years.
Some degrees, like medicine, may need the longer timescales because of practical inputs and a degree of experience being necessary, but the more lightweight subjects where it's more about personal research could easily be wrapped up a lot faster.

It's not a competitive system at all

You would think if it were some universities would offer 1 year courses.

Even traditional harder courses could be completed by some students much more rapidly. I recall it only took me 2 weeks to get a chemistry A-Level a course that is typically dragged out for 2 years.

Filo25

It's worth it for the stronger academic candidates doing more respected subjects at more respected universities, I have my doubts beyond that unless its doing more vocationally orientated degrees.

For a lot of people they would probably be better of learning a trade if their skills lay in that direction, but unfortunately we still have a fair amount of snobbery about getting a degree as compared to following a more practical education.

A lot of the benefits from getting a degree aren't particularly for society from what you learn, but more for yourself due to "signalling" to future employers that you can motivate yourself enough to get through a degree with minimal supervision from anyone else.

I'd have no objection to the state offering more financial support for students on say STEM courses with certain minimum standards, or for those from poorer backgrounds, but generally as most of the benefit from university education goes to the person taking it I think they should have to pay for it.

Sapphire

Filo25 wrote: »

It's worth it for the stronger academic candidates doing more respected subjects at more respected universities, I have my doubts beyond that unless its doing more vocationally orientated degrees.

For a lot of people they would probably be better of learning a trade if their skills lay in that direction, but unfortunately we still have a fair amount of snobbery about getting a degree as compared to following a more practical education.

A lot of the benefits from getting a degree aren't particularly for society from what you learn, but more for yourself due to "signalling" to future employers that you can motivate yourself enough to get through a degree with minimal supervision from anyone else.

I'd have no objection to the state offering more financial support for students on say STEM courses with certain minimum standards, or for those from poorer backgrounds, but generally as most of the benefit from university education goes to the person taking it I think they should have to pay for it.

I mostly agree with this. I do, however, think that subjects such as medicine, history/archaeology, and the sciences, do require intense study for a prolonged period in order to attain the knowledge necessary to get a degree – and some people never stop studying those subjects to keep up with new developments. To obtain employment in professions linked to those subjects (and to progress in them), it is necessary to have a high degree of knowledge.

I do also think there should be technical courses (perhaps combined with apprenticeships) for people to study to be electricians, carpenters and so on. I think far too little value is given to such professions, and I have a lot of respect for people who are good in such jobs.

For myself, I didn't initially go to university (mainly because I initially had no idea what I wanted to do and was interested mainly in enjoying life). After many interesting but very low-paid jobs (in offices of various kinds, a pub in the evening, shops, etc.), which gave me a lot of experience in how businesses worked and how people interacted in the 'working world', I finally hit on a profession that I loved, starting from junior level.

I gained all my experience on the job, in publishing – which was far better than getting a degree in terms of the knowledge I obtained in how to do the job. It was only when I was established in my profession (at managerial level) that I took a degree, which I paid for myself, in my free time, to learn more about a subject I loved. That led me on to many fascinating experiences. I've never been particularly interested in making 'big money', and corporate life would not have suited me at all (e.g. endless meetings with people wasting time talking about nothing and trying to get one over others, and so on).

Just a few thoughts on the subject…

westernpromise

It's worth remembering that back when we had GCEs and CSEs, fewer than 50% of pupils sat GCEs, and many fewer still sat three A Levels. Today, 50% are expected to go to university. This necessarily means that we are now sending to university people who, 30 years ago, would have been considered unable to pass an A-Level and within those quite a few who could not even have passed an O-Level.

One does wonder what that element of the university cohort stands to gain from a university degree. For CSE candidates of yesteryear to graduate from a latter-day degree course, the degree clearly has to be dumbed down to a level of simplicity such that even a CSE candidate can pass finals. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that some degrees must be equivalent in marketable value to a handful of CSEs.