Choosing a university petition

Walter_Jones

I have always thought that one advantage of student loans is that the Government know how much people earn after studying and if eighteen years old knew this they could make better choices about what to do.

What do people think about this as a petition on the Government petitions website?

Personally I would have studied somewhere different if I had known this information.

Here is the text

"When we put our money into a bank account we can see the interest rate, when we buy shares, we can see past earnings.

However, when young people must decide whether to go to university or not the Government refuses to publish the average earnings of those who have studied various courses before.

We call on the government to publish the mean, median and modal income for each year up to 10 years after graduation for every course and university in the UK. This will not be private information as it will only show the average earnings it will not say what any one graduate earns.

This information must be possible from the student loan database anyone who is competent in SQL should be able to do this.

"

Any thoughts? Of course past performance is not a perfect indicator - but it helps.

MattMattMattUK

Sounds a bit pointless and there are too many variables to make the data useful in any meaningful way. Many people complete a degree but do something totally unconnected, I know two people with medical degrees who earn a lot of money but do not work in medicine, I know someone with a law degree who is chef in a Michelin starred restaurant. Personally I am doing a PhD (although I never did a BSc or a Masters) part time at the moment, but I am also in full time employment as a business owner and operator, if I had a student loan I would skew the figures etc. The data also only includes those with loans, not those without. 

Pick a degree where you have competence and where it leads to a career, you can easily Google what are the top paying professions, but just getting a degree is far from enough to ensure you get or keep a job in those sectors. 

mebu60

Past earnings from shares is no indicator of future performance! 

I would echo MattMattMattUK's final paragraph. My daughter's bachelors was AI, she then did a neuroscience masters in Cognitive Engineering. Couldn't get funding for a PhD to apply AI skills from the former to her dementia research in the latter so now works in the aerospace industry testing tolerances on precision parts, happily so.

A large part of her university selection process was 'feel'. Those that seemed to be treating her as a £27k cheque got short shrift. One we were gone after the welcome, staying just long enough for a coffee and to use the loo. The one she chose at the top of her list I messaged her mother that morning to say I thought we were likely at 'the one'. 

The accuracy and relevance of any output from the petition you are proposing would be highly questionable in my view. 

ElefantEd

Also education isn't just about how much you can earn.

Walter_Jones

ElefantEd said:

Also education isn't just about how much you can earn.

If people think like that then they can ignore such figures - no reason for others not to have them.

Marcon

Walter_Jones said:

I have always thought that one advantage of student loans is that the Government know how much people earn after studying and if eighteen years old knew this they could make better choices about what to do.

What do people think about this as a petition on the Government petitions website?

Personally I would have studied somewhere different if I had known this information.

Here is the text

"When we put our money into a bank account we can see the interest rate, when we buy shares, we can see past earnings.

However, when young people must decide whether to go to university or not the Government refuses to publish the average earnings of those who have studied various courses before.

We call on the government to publish the mean, median and modal income for each year up to 10 years after graduation for every course and university in the UK. This will not be private information as it will only show the average earnings it will not say what any one graduate earns.

This information must be possible from the student loan database anyone who is competent in SQL should be able to do this.

"

Any thoughts? Of course past performance is not a perfect indicator - but it helps.

You say you'd have studied somewhere else if you'd had this information, but clearly something attracted you to your university/course.

What the petition suggests sounds pretty daft and not very helpful. There are too many other forces at play to make the data worth anything.

How many signatories has it got so far and when does it close?

caprikid1

I genuinely don't think it's that difficult to work out, I would say very few people decide a course on future earnings for that location, more likely the nightlife !

Emmia

How is this information collected - I didn't tell my uni what job I do or how much I earn, and I suspect the data would be fairly unreliable. 

The last contact I had with the Uni where I did my undergraduate was a call to them explaining that as someone who had graduated in the previous 2 years I wasn't in a position to give them wads of cash, donate regularly via direct debit or anything else of that sort... And could they stop writing and calling with these requests.

saker75

The Graduate Outcomes data for all HEIs is available but is of limited value. There are, as said above, too many variables in the graduate labour market. What is more interesting is the learning gain - the difference between academic grades on entering and leaving the institution. 

strawb_shortcake

My Son picked his university as there are only 3 places in the world where you can study his chosen field. He will most likely be self employed as a result with fluctuating income. 

My Daughter picked her university as she wanted to be close to home and did not want a city based university. 

Most of their peers chose their university due to location, nightlife and more holistic reasons. I'm not sure many 17/18 year olds will pick a university based on potential earnings as the other benefits will come top. 

Hindsight is a wonderful thing

Walter_Jones

Emmia said:

How is this information collected - I didn't tell my uni what job I do or how much I earn, and I suspect the data would be fairly unreliable. 

The last contact I had with the Uni where I did my undergraduate was a call to them explaining that as someone who had graduated in the previous 2 years I wasn't in a position to give them wads of cash, donate regularly via direct debit or anything else of that sort... And could they stop writing and calling with these requests.

Surely it would be in the student loan repayments?

saker75 said:

The Graduate Outcomes data for all HEIs is available but is of limited value. There are, as said above, too many variables in the graduate labour market. What is more interesting is the learning gain - the difference between academic grades on entering and leaving the institution. 

That is why I think they should do this - to get better information.