to ask if DC shouldn't bother with university if they can't get into a Russell Group one?

[TuTuTilly]

I'd never heard of the ruddy things before I joined MN. Didn't even realise I'd been to one. I do recall when I had a tedious summer job in Human Resources which included "sifting" job applications for an international firm of accountants, being told to dump any that weren't from a handful of universities.

So my question is; if your child can't get into an RG university - should they accept that they will be unemployable oiks upon graduation and resign themselves to a life working in call centres?

Spero you're being far too scary about law. For starters, as far as top commercial firms go, you get your vac scheme interviews/ offers in your second year before sitting any final exams and the September offers of training contracts aren't dependent on any class of degree (usually). The timing of applications for the top chambers is different, I'll give you that, but you can certainly get in without a First.

The main thing I'd quarrel with is the idea that you have to really want to be a lawyer in a highly lucrative field to do a law degree. You don't. Some people actively want to work in the lower paid, less exalted field, because that's their thing. And above all doing a full three year law degree rather than the conversion course is a good in itself: hugely varied and rigorous and well regarded by lots of employers outside the law.

Spero Those students currently emerging with English and History degrees are doing exactly what those with Economics and Maths degrees are doing , assembling themselves CVs that demonstrate they have the skills and experience to do a job. Leaving aside Lawyers and Accountants , I don't know if you have noticed but there is a whole economy out there, without which the Lawyers (commercial city ones at least) and Accountants couldn't earn a penny. Alongside supporting DD2 in her academic choices she has for the past 18 months been pushed out the door and into the world of work to start assembling a. some money to support her plans and b. that CV. When she comes out of her degree she will already have experience in marketing, sales, web design, curating, magazine layout and producing publicity material, presenting, networking etc. all skills and experience that will help her get a job just as much as hopefully having demonstrated she has the intellect, motivation and ability to work hard needed to get a degree in an academic subject, even if it is in History. I really don't care if she goes into the thriving area of the economy that Uk PLCs creativity has given us a market advantage in.

Actually personally as a Marketing Director I would take the History graduate over the Marketing or Business Studies graduate as generally they had the intellectual and analytical skills and I could send them off to the CIM to develop the vocational skills whilst they were able to study them in the context of real life experience. It is hard to replicate experiencing that on an undergraduate business degree and hard to replicate the intellectual rigour of the study of an established academic subject, effective management is after all a mix of intellect and common sense. However I am quite happy to admit I am a bit of a dinosaur and most employers now want a more fully formed employee. Which is why the model is changing to accommodate the best candidates having a chance to do that forming.

Also if you think you have gained as much from reading and attending literary festivals as you would from the serious rigorous academic study of literature then as someone who spent 35 years doing the former and the last twelve doing the latter you really really don't know what you are missing

I am not 'down' on my brother. I am just pointing out that an Eng Lit degree from a mediocre University may not be worth getting into debt for. I hope he is happy!

I don't think I am being scarey about law. I have taught law at three different institutions, I have lots of friends who are city solicitor types. The competition is very very intense and if you think a 2:1 from anywhere will get you in regardless of field, you are very, very wrong.

I don't think I can emphasise this enough, given the enormous debt that many law students will build up, if they don't get good training contracts, bursaries, etc.

I do work in the less exalted field of publicly funded family work. I could never have chose this field if I had a big student debt as the pay, while good, is not that good.

Copthall, I don't see that we are disagreeing. I am simply saying that spending three years deconstructing Beowulf is a pursuit that should be considered very carefully now that it cannot be pursued for free. Your child is clearly not doing that, but taking a clear headed approach on how to use and build on her skills.

Hopefully Eng lit degrees have moved on quite a lot from when I was researching them, as it was a long time ago now. But even as a callow teenager I thought all the courses sounded like a load of self indulgent wank.

'Rigorous academic study of literature' ??

What does this even mean? 'studying' literature appears to be an exercise in utter futility, stripping books of anything that gives joy and indulging in tedious subjective exercises of 'deconstruction'.

I used to have a little bet with myself how wanky I could in my analysis of Iago or Middlemarch before anyone would notice.

No one ever did. I got an A in English Literature A Level and am left with a profound sense of cycnicism about the whole thing.

Spero it doesn't matter whether you go into low paid or high paid work with student debts as you only pay a percentage over a certain amount so chances are for example that your brother wouldn't repay much if anything, if you earn more you pay more. I think it pays to think of student debt as a graduate tax, if you don't benefit you don't pay, if you only benefit a little you only pay a little, benefit a lot you pay a lot up to a max amount

True, but I still think it is incredibly off putting. Plus the costs of living away from home. I agree with the poster who said that students will probably have to stick close to their home towns, which kind of negates the whole POINT of university - apart from the study, a chance to spread your wings, meet loads of new people, not go home to your parents every night...

Maybe it is just very scarey for someone of my generation who benefitted from free education, hopefully my daughter's generation will be a lot more clued up. I don't want to see everyone becoming some drone, obsessed with this 'competitive race' that Gove keeps going on about.

Trouble is, if you insist on 'winners' you are inevitably creating a pyramid with only very few on top.

Indeed.

Remember this?

www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/10/bernard-henri-levy-hoaxes

This is the problem with any field of endeavour that relies almost entirely on subjective analysis. No one is ever 'wrong'. People have built entire careers, on what to me appears entirely arid and devoid of any interest or application to anyone outside their narrow field.

Of course, I have now guarranteed that this is exactly what my daughter will want to do, so I will resign myself to many years of biting lips and strained congratuations....

My favourite quote

Alan Sokal, a US physics professor, had a definite target in mind in 1996: the emptiness of trendy cultural theorists. And he scored a definite hit by getting a bogus article published in Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies. Titled Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermaneutics of Quantum Gravity, it was little more than a string of meaningless postmodern jargon.

so all that rigorous academic study, and no one at that journal at least could spot the fake...

A lot of the discussion on this thread seems to be about whether your degree is good enough for the top firms/chambers. But presumably somebody must work in the not-quite-so-top firms and chambers?

Ah, I forgot. They won't be the children of Mumsnetters.

No, my point is that you need at least a 2:1 from even a mid ranking place to have a hope in hell of getting anywhere for law. There is a huge glut of graduates.

there was an interesting thread a few months back from someone who thought that she should retrain as a barrister as she had an Oxbridge 2:1. a few hundred posts later and I think she got the point that this was no longer a guaranttee of anything much and wouldn't put her remotely in the lead for competition for pupillage/training contracts.

AND at the same time I loathed the texts I had to read over and over again and write constant bowel curdling tedious essays about.

School has killed Shakespeare for me STONE DEAD. It nearly did the same with Austen, but thank goodness she escaped, just about.

I remember going to Bristol's open day and learning that the course was first year, Chaucer, second year Beowulf, third year, can't remember as think I had run out screaming at this point.

Thus I decided on law, being innumerate and wholly unscientific I had not many options open to me. My dad refused to speak to me for a few months, but it was a small price to pay to be spared a solid year of Chaucer.

So what were your tutors doing not marking for quality of content, Spero and LaQueen? If my students' essays are full of meaningless drivel I will tell them so (ever so nicely). If they attempt to hitch a ride on trendy jargon I will mark them down- as per instructions from my department. Originality of content and quality of argument are separate marking criteria (along with quality of language and various others) and we need to explain in our feedback exactly how they have fallen short of the various criteria.

I think it matters what you study almost as much as where you study. Some universities that are not RG have a good reputation for particular subjects and you should certainly not hesitate to apply to a uni that is good for your subject even if it's not RG. That said, my DD is at a RG uni and I hope she'll be employable when she graduates next year!

My A level tutors were either very thick or didn't bother reading what I wrote OR I was clever enough to string together convincing sounding crap.

My money is on the latter, seeing how easy it was to fool the entire editorial staff of the journal in my link.

Ah, so you are judging a degree in English literature from your experience of A-levels, Spero. Is that reasonable? I might have to mark you down for quality of argument.

Nope, I am judging it from A level study, plus research into five courses at Oxford, Exeter, Royal holloway and Bedford and two others now vanished into obscurity.

I attended open days, spoke to students and tutors. I was then interviewed by three on my list.

I am so thankful I did not go down that route. I think I would have ended up extremely frustrated and bitter.

I now read a lot for pleasure and it is probably the thing I enjoy most, apart from playing with my ipad.

But I will never accept that literature is suitable for three years academic study. If you do want to to that at university, I think you had better make sure you chose somewhere in the top ten otherwise it could be an expensive indulgence.

hahahah! I did an OU course in child development - I had to drop out half way through with serious morning sickness.

Once baby born, I started again so had already 'done' the first three essays. So I simply submitted the same essays - and EACH TIME got radically different marks for EXACTLY the same material.

One was incredible - the first time it was submitted I got 73% and lots of glowing comments. The second I got 53% and lots of criticisms. Exactly the same title, nothing had changed on the course in a year, I hadn't missed anything vital. Just one examine had a subjectively different approach.

Please don't tell me that anything about this kind of process deserves the descritptor of 'rigourous'.

ooo spooky! I have just noticed our percentages were the same!!!! What does this mean?