If you did a non professional degree at uni, do you regret it?

[Pheonix2023]

By no professional I mean a degree that wasn’t for a specific thing
like medical degree to become a dr, dentist,lawyer,nurse etc ?

A degree is a wasting asset so I think what matters more than the subject is that it gets you onto a graduate career ladder as quickly as possible - if you drift into low pay/prospects roles just to make ends meet it can be very difficult to get back on track

I don't regret it (did Eng Lit) but professionally it didn't help me much. Great experience both academically and socially but not helpful. This was in the 'old days' though so no fees etc.

I was talking to my own kids who are early teens about this yesterday actually. One wants to look at something vaguely 'medical' but not medicine. She is good at maths and science especially biology so I can see something like pharmacology maybe.

The other was quite interested in 'energy'. She excels at physics and is strong in geography although as great at Maths. Possibly some kind of engineering.

Obviously very early days for them but in their heads they are looking for a degree to align immediately with a profession. They don't see the point in doing what I did.

You need to make sure when you get into the world of work, you make the degree work for you and keep climbing, learning, doing more qualifications. It pays off further down the line.

I did a humanities degree . After a few years working in jobs which didn’t require a degree I did a 1 year Primary PGCE. I’m now a senior teacher earning very good money . Thank big I did my degree as it is an essential requirement for a PGCE.

Not for a second. I did an Eng Lit degree at Cambridge and have been an English teacher for 27 years.

I did a Graphic Design degree for 3 years when I was 17, I graduated in 2008 at the start of the recession and never worked in it. I actually worked in a supermarket for 4 years after graduating.

When I went back to college at 26 I was sure to choose something that I was pretty much sure to get a job in and did nursing, no regrets.

i did non vocational degree and no regrets:

my eldest is at an RG uni doing a non vocational degree. I’m 100% supportive of it. I didn’t particularly want him to do a vocational degree unless he specifically wanted to. I don’t see how a straight academic degree from a well regarded university can be anything other than a good idea: he will be in a good position to go into most of what he wants.

The thing with a more generic degree is you have to work quite hard to utilise it; you can't expect to just get a degree and fall into a graduate job like you can with a vocational degree. Thankfully with something like humanities there is usually more free time to do things like volunteering, and only 3 years which saves some money for a postgraduate if you then want to specialise. I have no regrets because I went to uni wanting to be a teacher and very quickly realised that wasn't what I wanted, so a humanities degree enabled me to be flexible. But I spent a lot of time in year 1 reflecting on how I would use the degree, and as soon as I found a sector of interest I researched, found voluntary roles, studied the career root and started planning for masters etc. this enabled me to hit the ground running on graduation rather than spending time a bit lost in unskilled work.

The thing with a more generic degree is you have to work quite hard to utilise it; you can't expect to just get a degree and fall into a graduate job like you can with a vocational degree.

Yes, I agree with this.

*career route, my degree wasn't in English

Yes I agree with this. My first non vocational/professional degree was from a low graded uni and I got a 2:2 after not doing much work. I was never going to be a prime candidate for graduate jobs and to be honest didn’t have the confidence to even think about stuff like that. I didn’t make use of the careers services, I looked at stuff like the civil service graduate scheme and realised how competitive it was/is and didn’t bother. Which probably says more about me.

with a non vocational degree from a better uni or a better grade or just if I was a different person it may have been a different story.

my brother did a history degree from a mid ranking uni and then a Masters and got in the civil service graduate scheme. A friend’s ds did geography at a low ranking university (got a 1st) and got a graduate job with the EA.

so I fully agree that there are possibilities with a non vocational degree.

It’s an entirely different question now to what it was 25-30 years ago. I graduated in 1992.

Back then, far fewer people went to university. Degrees were rarer. If you had a maths or hard science degree from a top university, which was what I had, you had your pick of graduate jobs, provided you had some personality to go with it, of course.

Now, the playing field is very different. Degrees cost a lot. There are far more universities. More people do degrees, partly because expectations have been reset. Graduates are ten a penny. That has shaped the choices people make.

I work in finance. We see far more applicants with accountancy and finance degrees now. It doesn’t buy them any kind of advantage when applying for a Big Four accountancy firm, or a large business. What I look for is academic ability and problem solving skills. I judge that by the academic rigour of the degree and the institution at which the person studied. What’s interesting is that more people have chosen to study a vocational degree because they think that’s what will secure them an advantage when applying for a sought-after role. It shows how many degree holders are out there: the currency has been debased.

To be blunt, if your daughter fancies studying geography at Edge Hill or Lincoln or Wolverhampton or a similar third division university, tell her not to bother. If she is an Oxbridge or RG prospect, it won’t do her any harm. Is she unusually intelligent and capable? If so, she can probably get away with geography at a good university rather than a better-regarded subject. Sorry, geographers, but you must know that geography, unfairly or otherwise, was traditionally regarded as the subject you studied if you weren’t that smart and/or couldn’t decide what to study. Don’t shoot the messenger.

I’m graduating this year with a health and social care degree via the OU. No I don’t regret it at all, it’s opened doors even before I finished it.

There are degrees that don't immediately align with a profession that allow them to enter a wide range of professions e.g. Maths, Physics, Economics.

Also if you do a degree aligned to a profession e.g. an engineering degree then you can end up doing something completely different as you can make more money in it. I've been recruited by HR women who are engineers, and know accountants and solicitors with a wide range of degrees. They are all different ages.

I'm a lecturer at a RG uni. Courses have been dumbed down so much, I have lost all faith in our degrees and I suspect employers will too soon. I'm really not sure degrees are worth the fees. As for the social aspect, students seem to suffer so much from MH and anxiety, I don't know if that many will look back on these years the way we do.

Part of that reason is because it is from the OU.

I've worked for companies, both SMEs and large, who when they have a choice of candidates with degrees from a traditional uni and OU, prefer the OU qualified candidate.

Loved my degree but should have done something that gave me more options. I teach but struggle to move schools because it’s not English/maths/science. I love what I teach though so swings and roundabouts I guess. I did something I love because I wanted to learn more never with the aim of employment as I was employed throughout then changed fields about three years after graduating

Geography can open the door to a lot of jobs. It's relatively technical and teaches research skills. Any number of MSc's would be open to her afterwards. .

I did a science degree and then a more specialist MSc that led into my career. A number of my colleagues did the same thing from a geography degree.

I actually think it's a great choice of degree if it's a subject she enjoys and she doesn't yet know what she wants to do as a career

I did what was named the Mickey Mouse degree .. media studies. I loved it! It was fun but hard work to. I have since worked in the magazine / newspaper and news media industry ever since. I have huge respect for animation artists as that was something I really enjoyed. The field within media I ended up in is not frontline but I doubt without my degree I'd have had so many amazing job opportunities. I now work 10ths a week totally flexible from home and have done for over 10 yrs whilst raising my children. Years of earning my stripes got me to that stage and I'm very grateful. So.. not so Mickey Mouse after all.

I was talking to my own kids who are early teens about this yesterday actually. One wants to look at something vaguely 'medical' but not medicine. She is good at maths and science especially biology so I can see something like pharmacology maybe

I was similar. Science, while I loved the degree, closed more career doors than it opened. Be careful and look at her graduate options before she chooses.

especially if her goal is vaguely “medical”- what does that mean? If she wants to work in hospitals, with patients on a practical level she needs a vocational degree in a allied field. Pharmacology or similar she’s looking at labs, academia, research, medical writing etc.

@Reugny

That is good to hear. Especially when people (some family members) have kindly told me it’s not even a proper degree 🤦‍♀️. I ignored them of course.

I did English with drama followed by a law conversion course. I also did philosophy in the first year or my Eng lit course. I don't regret it. Great education and also developed skills I use everyday as a lawyer.

I suspect many of those of the 'get a degree, any degree;it's th entry to an amazing job' are of a late 90s vintage. Possibly with parents who didn't get to do a levels and therefore saw those in their generation with degrees earning more.

My degree was fine, but I had no idea how to use it after uni- and neither did my parents. I fell into English teaching because I thought I had to get a proper job immediately. I probably should have drifted more and worked out what I actually wanted to do. I have a love hate relationship with my job and feel a little guilty when my students are inspired enough to do English in uni themselves. But then, where is the next generation of English teachers going to come from?

My geography degree opened a huge number of doors for me.

@Reugny yes agree. I work in a profession where my colleagues have a range of degrees (mostly economics/science based, I am fairly unusual with my English degree!). Same for my brother/cousins/friends. So less my view, more the view my kids have when they start thinking about fees/loans/debt and whether it's worth it. They are only young though - 4/5 years before they go if they do so it's still quite abstract.

Also yes re the 'medicine'. She's coming up to picking options so we're just at the very start of thinking about things. What I want to help them do is think even loosely about what they may enjoy so they have a bit of focus.