Big dilemma for DD - what would you do?

[Blackenedsoul]

DD has accepted an offer for her Uni of choice to study Media in September. She’s been looking forward to going, had planned to live at home and travel the 20 minutes in every day.

She had a part time job for a few months in a local office attached to a very small but very busy manufacturing company. She’s very well thought of and works in the office on a Saturday, doing admin, answering enquiries, emails, booking appointments etc.

Today they’ve offered her a full time, permanent post in the office and have offered to start training her up in the use of their accounts systems etc, give her more responsibility. The salary is 18k to start rising to around a max of 25k once fully trained.

This has come as a bolt from the blue, DD really enjoys the job and thinks she’d be happy doing it full time but at the same time was also happy to go off and have the Uni experience, make new friends and study and have fun.

She’s aware that lots of students leave Uni and end up falling into admin roles vey much like this and is now wondering whether bothering with Uni is worth it.

We’ve told her the decision is entirely hers but she’s really finding it hard to decide.

So, the great of mumsnet - what would you do?

@LemonSwan

I have never read so much insanity in my life.

Of course she should go to uni. Keep the Saturday job. Potentially pick up a few shifts on a quite week ad hoc.

Why would she wed herself to an 18k job! Potentially 25k.

God have some ambition. Shes clearly a hard worker and will go far with a little self worth

🙄🙄'hid have some ambition'🙄🙄

Look at the economy, look at what it's going to be like in three years time. Graduate jobs are not going to be falling out of the sky, especially not media graduate jobs.

Despite what you seem to think, fucking about aimlessly at Uni, for a few years is not the be all & end all. Ambition comes in many firms, the ones that will do something with their ambition are the ones that act on it. Not piss about at Uni fir 3/4/7/21 years because they don't know what else to do & it's 'fun'.

Brightsunshinyday: These "soft skills" are often forgotten or laughed at but you can tell who's spent a few years putting their thoughts into writing, presenting complex matters in front of critical peers and things like that.

I agree. Having tried to train up non-graduates to do more 'thinking' roles that involve putting thoughts and ideas on paper, there is a reluctance, almost fear, of complexity and critical thought. There is a tendency to just want to 'do', or be told what to 'do', but not to exercise judgement or perform analysis or design processes.

@partyatthepalace

I think it depends on the degree course she wants to do - PR/advertising/Comtent creation quite tough to get into. As a general rule for content/copyright creation type paths you would be better doing something like English somewhere with a solid rep. However for more technical paths there are some great tech focused media degrees. I work in media and employ a fair few grads - not all media degrees are worth doing - so make sure it’s a good one if she does choose to go.

@partyatthepalace, can you give examples of the tech-focused media degrees that are worth doing and the universities that are well known for them. Mn tends to be Oxbridge, RG-focused.

Is there a way she can try this job for a year AND start studying for her degree? A lot of uni courses are online at the moment, especially in media. Even if she knocks over just one or two subjects online this year, it will mean she can grab both opportunities.

I work in media. It's an extremely volatile industry, and any newbie will need to offer something niche. If, for example, your DD did this accountancy qual and also did some content/copywriting and possibly website maintenance for this small company, plus got her media degree (in practical subjects such as PR campaigns, video editing and news writing), she'd have a huge advantage over other job-seekers. (And minimal debt!!!)

I see a lot of young media graduates working for free as interns to get experience. Some don't get their first proper, full-time role until their early 30s. That's no aspersion on their talent. It's the nature of the industry and of the workforce in general, which has changed enormously since I started as a 19yo (on full pay and benefits) as a newspaper cadet in 1985.

BTW, a B for maths sounds pretty solid to me. Get that accounting qual, do the degree part time or online, write some content for the company and get solid, paid experience -- that's my advice to your DD. Good luck to her, she sounds great.

Why do so many posters assume that media graduates don't get work? I went straight into a great job as did my peers. Two decades on and some of our children are doing the same. Friend's daughter had five offers from leading broadcasters.

I don't know where you people get your information or whether coincidentally you were all low-grade students with poor job search skills but the narrative in here bears no resemblance to my experience as a media professional.

She doesn’t need a media degree for the things you have mentioned (PR, copywriting etc). She needs drive in whatever she does in life but especially media. But given where we are right now, I would defer for a year, get useful job and life experience, build up her cv in her spare time in media related roles.

Meant to add -- Working within a business and knowing how it manages people and cash flow is the sort of education money can't buy. It will be an asset in whatever role your DD hopes to find in the future.

Honestly media degree vs working?

Might as well be working for a year. Those degrees are ten a penny and don’t even train you for anything. Having the training in her cv though would be amazing and she would look like a proper self starter - good for her.
A year working would be so beneficial for her and we all know what the working world ma like right now: I’d be grabbing that with both hands!

I’m not being rude: I did psychology like half the planet and it really meant that i was just another psychology graduate in a sea of graduates with more useful degrees. In order to stand out I would have had to do a masters

I’m generally very pro university but I think in this case she should defer and commit to the job for a year.

It doesn’t sound to me as though she has a burning desire to do the degree, and as it’s close to home she’s not really embracing the full uni experience. And the uni experience is a bit ropey at the moment anyway.

I would try and ask for the company to give formal training, perhaps in AAT. Some of my friends (STEM degrees, RG uni) went into AAT after uni anyway. The job might give her a much better understanding of what she wants from life, plus money behind her to get the most out of uni. Much better than picking something because she feels she has to.

Your comment about her not wanting to let people down is worrying and you need to work on it; it’s her life, she should do what she wants. If this suits right now then great, but she doesn’t need to commit her whole life to this job.

I would encourage her to take the job. The real world experience and the maturity and insight she will gain will be very valuable. After a few years she may well have a better idea of long term career goals and could do a degree or other form of higher education then - and the additional maturity and understanding she has gained from her years of employment will mean she gets a lot more out of that studying than the average 18-21 year old who often doesn't have the maturity to maximise the benefit they get from their educational opportunities. It would be wise for her to save up a good chunk of her earnings until she has a long term plan - it's easy to spend everything earned and get used to a high disposable income, which then makes it more difficult to plan for big changes when she settles on an ambition to start building towards.

I've no idea why everyone is saying "£25k isn't much of a salary for life". I don't think she would stay in this job forever, it would be a way to get experience and training on the job, and then move into a higher paid role in a different organisation. Or go to uni in a few years time with working experience and a better idea of a career path, and get a great job at the end of uni.

My husband started in a minimum wage job age 18 and never went to uni. He now earns £45k and never bothered with uni because his experience and work ethic was enough. You don't have to go to university to get a good job.

I definitely wouldn't want to go to uni at present, it is all up in the air with covid anyway and as most people seem to think the main point of uni is as an "experience" rather than the qualification, I don't think she would get that experience at the moment.

She might as well go to uni. Unless they earn over about £28,000 a year or whatever it is now, they don't even have to start paying it back. So for a lot of them it's basically a grant.

There's nothing lost by her going to uni, so she could go for it and enjoy it. If she doesn't she'll regret it.

I would take the job - uni will always be there and I think it's good for young people to get some life experience first anyway and get some money behind them.

I definitely wouldn't want to go to uni at present, it is all up in the air with covid anyway and as most people seem to think the main point of uni is as an "experience" rather than the qualification, I don't think she would get that experience at the moment.

@ChocOrange1 Her course will be three years' long so god willing Covid won't be an issue for most of it. In the autumn there might be some precautions to try and avoid some of the autumn/winter spike, but hopefully not to anything like the extent we had last year. Then Insh'allah by next year, when she'll just be a few months into her 3-year course, things could be near normal, I hope.

the job , personally i think uni is overhyped and how many of them actually leave it to get a job in what they studied for anyway , i know quite a lot that didnt .

This happened to me but when I was 16.

I thought it was a great place, loved the people, had a crush on someone there was was twice my age which made it worse! Anyway I turned it down, since I've been to university and got a PhD and degree and my life is very different - I met my now DH at uni

I kind of saw it as similar to 'marrying my first boyfriend' if I had taken the job and hadn't been out there and done more exciting thjngs to be honest. The people at the job thought they were doing the best they could for me by offering me a job but really the best fit me was a different journey
I hope your DD chooses wisely

I worked during my university holidays for what was then a startup. At the end of my 3rd year going into my final year they offered my a job. I refused as I wanted to finish my degree. I've never given it much thought but I probably should have discussed it with some proper adults not just my bf.

That company is now very big and a household name beloved of MNetters. If I'd taken advice I think they'd have given me a share option. I'd be living a different life.

But I love my life and I haven't lived in the Uk for 25 years.

So I'd say to your daughter talk to the company. Really talk to them and see what they suggest before she says no. Can they provide a way fir her to do both things?

Giving up going to uni is a big thing. No degree is a pretty big deal and harder to do later in life. I was offered a masters place at uni and I turned it down. A lack of masters has blocked my career continuously (v important in the country I now live in) and now at 50 I'm doing something about it. Because I've found an area of work I'm passionate about.

So I'd tell her to talk to the company. University can be delayed a year, but shouldn't be abandoned altogether. It can be done differently but it's a lot of fun doing it the regular way. Living at home is probably not the most fun way of doing it either. And settling down and working is the rest of her life.

I’m sorry to say it OP and don’t wish to cause any offence but my head screamed ‘take the job’ the moment I read ‘media degree’!

If DD was going to do maths, medicine, accountancy, engineering....literally any solid subject with a high employment rate post graduation I’d say take the chance. Even things like nursing whilst not highly paid are pretty much guaranteed careers. The job market and economy are taking a big hit post Brexit and honestly I don’t think media, literary, fashion, art, drama, music...etc are going to be worth the paper they’re written on for years to come unless you’re doing them at oxbridge with strong connections already in the industry. Those sectors already have way more people than jobs and most are only accessed via unpaid internships or family connections.

Unless the degree you do is vocational - medicine, accountancy, science - then it's pretty much pointless to saddle yourself with enormous debts just to end up with an £18k job anyway at the end.

Job!

go to uni but do the job in her spare time, ie the summer holidays as wlel as saturdays.

Do both - defer for a year or two, save up some money, get great relevant skills and then enjoy the Uni experience.

I have managed administrators in the past, and although they're not graduate jobs, on the whole, the people with degrees just have a bit 'extra' at the job than the people who don't.

Look at the economy, look at what it's going to be like in three years time. Graduate jobs are not going to be falling out of the sky, especially not media graduate jobs.

Where is the small family manufacturing business going to be in three months, let alone three years?

Media studies isn't exactly a ticket to a fabulous career.

Can she take the job and study part time?

I’d do the job for a couple of years. I didn’t go to university and have consistently out earned most of my friends who did. That said, I missed out on some great jobs because of the lack of degree. Some places use a degree as a filter, and don’t consider experience. I was headhunted for a job once, and was dropped like a stone when they realised I didn’t have a degree. It could have been in Mime or Media Studies, they didn’t care. I just needed the piece of paper.

Media is one of the worthless degrees - sorry. She’s going to have about £27k of tuition fees loans in 3 years and no job. Keep the job.