Minimum wage vs graduate salaries

[DuesToTheDirt]

So now that the NMW gives you over £25k a year for a 40 hr week, it seems that the gap between that and a graduate salary is tiny. I'm not talking here about the tiny cohort of grads that earn 50k in banking or management training, but about the ones I know personally. The graduates I know, even up to about age 35, are mostly earning not a lot more than that - 26k for one 32-year old friend, 30k for a 28-year old guy in my company, 30k for a friend's child in her late 20s, etc. That's the ones who have actually got a graduate job, as many haven't and are still working in hospitality or similar. Just wondering what the point is of a degree these days!

Yes, I know everyone and his dog has a degree these days, but was I wrong in expecting degrees to help my children get a decent lifestyle?

Not sure what field you’re in but in nursing it’s not a foregone conclusion that you’ll be promoted to a B6. I know of long qualified perfectly good nurses who are still band 5s because they never managed to get a 6. Even specialised nursing roles often require specialist qualifications and experience which are difficult to obtain before you start applying for them. I remember years ago I fancied working in alcohol and drug dependence and there were no ‘starter’ B5 posts, just B6 ones requiring evidence of learning in the field.
Funnily enough I’m sure that midwives automatically get promoted to B6 and likewise physios for example but Crit care nurses can be stuck at the same grade for years despite having a lot of specialist knowledge. It’s mad really.

SALT, have been told I’ll get promoted to a 6 as soon I’ve got my dysphagia competencies so next year hopefully.

But yep, I know what you mean re nursing - used to work in acute at band 2 and half my colleagues didn’t want a band 6 as they would lose the chance to do actual nursing and didn’t see the value in it - band 6 were more or less doing the role of a band 7 but not being paid a 7 wage. Band 6s were also not really allowed to do nights as it was a ‘waste’. So you’d have a band 5 doing a 6 job, band 2 and 3 doing a 5 short of drugs rounds and IVs (we did all washes, cares, escorting, notes, meals, family support, charts, obs, 1:1 care etc) and then 6 doing a 7 … I can’t imagine it’s got any better since I left a few years ago either.

This. Weird to be talking about degrees being useless as if they're all the same...like having a first class biopharmaceutical degree is the same as a 2.2 in English lit.

I work in Crit care. Since Covid we now have band 6s in purely supervisory roles, rarely take patients, are supposed to help out where required and act as ‘the source’ of experience and knowledge. Ironically it’s kind of what band 5s did before the pandemic when we ‘floated’ and didn’t have a patient. Most of them spend time on their phones and then moan they’re becoming deskilled. On the other hand they get trained as ‘super users’ but rarely use the equipment. Band 6s on here rarely come up and mainly folk have to move sideways to then move up in a different speciality, it’s silly. I was an experienced E grade on a ward back in the day, had to drop to a D when I moved to ICU so essentially 5 years of my career wasted. It’s so demotivating. Band 7s do no clinical work unlike 6 or 7 years ago and rarely come out on to the shop floor, yet we now have double the number, 7 currently.

Most degrees are fairly pointless. A degree was stil quite rudimentary even when only the upper middle.classrs did them 50+ years ago. Your degree was the start of your proper education, and you finished it with postgraduate study if you were truly academic. These days, degrees have been turned into big business with the expenses of accommodation and everything else maximised to increase profit. Getting a degree is no longer much different to buying a big mac or a pair of branded shoes. The big problem now is, so many people have them that those without them don't stand a chance of a decent salary unless they work for themselves in some capacity.

People can follow any passion they have, but why should taxpayers subsidise this passion? Is there demand in our society for so many art graduates?

I meant the arts generally - musicians, historians, writers, artists etc etc. I suppose we live in a society where those things have less value. Careers in these areas don't generally pay well. I just find it depressing that learning has become narrower and economically driven.

Because having an educated, artistic, literate society benefits us all.

Then as a society we need to determine how much we value such skills and how much we’re willing to spend on such degrees. We’ll have to make trade offs as resources are unfortunately limited