To think university snobbery must stop

[Staceystace]

I was telling a friend about my nephew who is off to University. I said to her he is off to x uni to study English, she said oh I didn’t even realise that was even a uni. She then went on to emphasise how her daughter is off to a top 20 uni, she went on to say how she wouldn’t have gone if it was not a Russell or 1994 group as she does not think it is worth the debt. I just got the vibe she was looking down on my nephews uni. Aibu to think this sort of snobbery about unis is terrible and needs to stop. My nephew is not the most academic, but surely not everyone is capable of going to a russell group.

What teens remember is immaterial, JillCrewesmum.

The important factor is the lack of attention to the technical side of third level by governments.

Regional Technical Colleges were set up in Ireland in the 60s and 70s in a complete vacuum. The students who initially went to them were young people who would otherwise have emigrated and worked on building sites. It is possible to create a new sector and to fund it. It takes evidence-based planning though, something the UK tends not to do because political expedience is the most important factor in policy making.

Manufacturing is a long way form dead in the water - it continues to expand in Ireland, which has developed a pharmaceutical industry from nothing (just one example among many of industries that have developed in an economy that was overwhelmingly agricultural primary production a few decades ago), in Germany which has always had a strong industrial base. These are just two examples. Government policy in the UK has focused on financial services, which fund everything else.

I own a manufacturing company math. It is not an attractive career in the UK! Those days are gone here.

Low contact hours arts courses are in effect subsidising high contact hours courses which require labs and equipment.

And unscrupulous universities contact CCC students like User's DS to offer places in law or history...

If manufacturing had been developed - and new industries developed - instead of killed off in favour of service industries whose big players were potentially more likely to be donors to the Tory party, it would be attractive.

It's not a step forward or in the right direction to give up on manufacturing.

"It's not a step forward or in the right direction to give up on manufacturing."

This ^^ with bells on. OH has been in manufacturing all his life (1st class degree from an RG university, MBA, PhD), and most of his contracts are in the far East.

Interestingly loads of DD's peers have opted for engineering degrees this year.

I agree totally about manufacturing, however most manufacturing in this country is hanging on by a thread. Engineering is still very popular as a degree, a Btec, a diploma, they seem to be the only apprenticeship going, you can do accredited online courses. I don't think we need to worry about engineering as an education option, but whether there are really enough jobs (at least in this country) is moot.

I wouldn't necessarily say all manufacturing is on its knees in this country. We own a business that supplies a wide range of manufacturing industry. Some are struggling, others are growing strongly. Renewables are booming, oil picking back up (although this is always cyclical), specialist and highly technical manufacturing that has adapted are finding plenty of business.

These guys do recruit a lot of graduates. One in particular take their pick from the top chemistry graduates each year. None would know what to do when you put a spanner in their hand. And that's important too.

That being said, we don't have any issue recruiting these type of guys either. But not necessarily from a local college. And we don't give too much credence to their education, most of the cvs we receive are awful. It's a spark, a something about the person that is different. That thing you can't put into words. Then we will put the time into them.

Small business operates in a different way in general.

Anyway, beside the point.

Do you really, genuinely think that the only job sports science graduates can do is personal training? You are either really quite ignorant or just being goady.

My daughter's Sports Science graduate friend is the sports scientist for the England Cricket team and travels the world with them.

My Sports Scientist daughter is a primary school teacher, who coaches in her spare time. She enjoyed her degree, and found many aspects of it challenging: biomechanics, physiology, psychology, etc.

*And that is why it is a pity that 'widening participation' in 'university' education was attempted without regard for outcomes for the weakest or the most disadvantaged students and those lacking cultural capital.

It did not result in more respect for degrees. It has not had an impact on social mobility except to exclude people without degrees from jobs that they could previously have hoped to get. All the widening and poorly thought-out funding initiatives have done is saddle students with debt and cause employers to discriminate among universities and courses, and not in favour of graduates of every course in the newer universities.*

^^ I totally agree with this.

Some sectors of engineering it seems have lots of older engineers but then a big gap and they're scrabbling for new graduates.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/stem-awards/energy/the-great-uk-engineering-shortage/

www.randstad.co.uk/job-seeker/career-hub/archives/uk-engineering-facing-a-skills-crisis_1101/

DD and some of her cohort are training to be engineers of various sorts - a spread of all types of uni and an apprenticeship, a spread of A level grades - I'm pretty sure no one will be suggesting to any of them they're wasting their time and money.

I'm pretty sure no one will be suggesting to any of them they're wasting their time and money

No, because its very fashionable at the moment to do STEM and engineering. Whether the jobs are really there in this country remains to be seen.

There seem to be a lot of sources saying there's a skills shortage in engineering- some, as I suggested, driven by demographics. E.g. a swathe of high voltage electrical engineers will be retiring at the same time. The telecoms company DD has an internship with this summer has, she says, many older guys, then a noticeable gap and they're trying hard to recruit/retain.

Are there non-STEM sectors where a skills shortage exists or is predicted on demographic grounds to arise? It might be very helpful to highlight those.

My guess is they won't necessarily be areas where spending 3 years doing a generic degree will be helpful, but I'd genuinely like to be wrong about that.

It is difficult to tell. At present we are almost back to 1950s levels of full employment although plenty of that is at very very low wages without rises even inflation linked over the last 10 years with many of those jobs subsidised by the state by tax credits, housing benefit/ universal credit. It is also a very regional specific employment picture with some areas with hardly any jobs or wealth and others like say London, Cambridge etc having done very well.

I think we may be in for a bit of a shortage of doctors and may be nurses and teachers. Plenty of teachers have a general arts degree. I might be wrong however. Also I don't think teenagers should choose careers based on skills shortages as things change so much over time. My Head at school was very very off putting about doing law in the 1970s as she said the profession had so many people going into it and not to do it. I ignored that as I thought it would be interesting and well paid as indeed it has been.

I don't think there is any snobbery regarding proper vocational degrees or courses. I would be entirely happy for any child of mine to go down this route.

What there is rightful snobbery about is doing a straight school subject - eg English - at an institution which only requires the barest minimum of A Level grades. Yes, there are always the outliers who wish to study close to home/have seen that the course includes a module on such and such/mature student, but in the main one's peers will not be of high ability.

Furthermore some places are packing 'em in with "sexy" degrees: it used to be Media Studies, but now every second person seems to be doing "Criminology" . It sounds interesting - we all like a bit of sleuthing - but how many Criminology graduates I wonder are now wailing that there are no graduate jobs ?

Criminology may be perfect for the young man described upthread for whom it's a clear part of his career ladder in the police. But for others, maybe not so much. The example I've seen mentioned quite a lot is forensic science; a 'vanilla' science degree eg chemistry may be preferable both for getting a job in the field and allows more other career options if that's not possible.

Hmm..on another thread a while back people were horrified that I expected my dc to a degree course that might lead to a job. Apparently, going to university is about just enjoying learning for learnings sake and of course, ‘finding yourself’. Thinking there might be a job at the end shows that you have failed at education.

This thread seems to leaning firmly towards the opposite. Wonder where all those people on other thread are🤔

It shouldn't be an either/or.

DD chose a course in which some parts will be somewhat 'learning for learnings sake' ... which means more bloody hard work. And a challenging, full-time course (she's had days with more 'contact hours' than some of her artsy pals get in a week) is perfectly compatible with having a great uni experience and 'finding yourself'. Doing a serious internship over the summer may well be more valuable for that than what many of her pals are doing...

I do actually think there's too much focus (especially at A level) on getting grades as a means to an end rather than learning being an end in itself but at university there should be need for this false dichotomy.

If an 18 or 19 year old doesn't know what they want to do in the future then a 'vanilla' degree in a subject in which they have appropriate academic ability then fine - but they should take a good look at employment stats etc and go into it with their eyes open.

I think all snobbery should stop, the world would be a much nice place.
If someone goes to university, then good for them. Equally, those who didn't, shouldn't be touchy about someone studying as in "oohh, university?? so you're that clever?" meaning "more clever than me? who do you think you are?" kinda shit. As to "the top 20", they can shove it up their backside. A certificate doesn't mean you are more intelligent, just probably more employable and have "connections". But a lot of people do amazing jobs, and are highly professional, without going to the university.

"much nicer place"

I own a manufacturing company math. It is not an attractive career in the UK! Those days are gone here.

Can't disagree more strongly with that I'm afraid. I worked in a design/manufacturing company not that long ago. It grew from a man in his garden shed to a multi million pound company with 300 staff exporting all over the world in just 5 years. He basically designed a new product for the offshore oil & gas industry, patented it, and then started manufacture. It soon got noticed by the huge global oil giants and became the "standard" component. To this day, it's still manufactured in the UK and exported to the south China Seas, Australasia, South America, etc. I still know people who work there so keep up to date. The original guy sold it for 20/30 million and it's now owned by a global oil exploration firm, but still the full design facility and manufacturing operation is in the UK.

Manufacturing may be dead for low value items which can be made cheaper in China or by robot, but for higher tech items requiring top design skills and precision engineering, the UK is quite able to compete.

@Errol I agree with all of that.

My manufacturing business competes. That's why I'm still employed.

Surely precision engineering and hi tech can't be so huge that it can support a bottomless pit of engineers?

I tend to agree with xenia that the skills shortages will be in healthcare and teaching.

• Surely precision engineering and hi tech can't be so huge that it can support a bottomless pit of engineers?

Sure, but there's all the other engineering too - all the infrastructure systems we take for granted. Power supply ( grid, moves to localisation), telecomms, civil, transport ... there's the disruptive change of electric vehicles looming. Those things surely will always need engineers with skills from 'oily rag' to mind-bogglingly hard maths.

Surely precision engineering and hi tech can't be so huge that it can support a bottomless pit of engineers?

There are relatively few top notch engineers as it's been regarded as a poor career choice for decades. In the company I worked in, we were always open to recruit the best design engineers as we always had vacancies - just couldn't get enough. We had to start recruiting overseas as there just weren't any in the UK - in the year I left, we had recruited an Italian and a Brazilian at huge salaries plus fully supported living costs (we even found houses for them and paid their rent!). There was a "bottomless" pit of people to actually make the things, i.e. factory floor workers, test engineers etc. (i.e. HND/HNC level), but there was a massive shortage of actual design engineers to work in the R&D and product design sections (i.e. Design engineering graduates). Considering that schools still regard "tech" as something for the poorer students to do and push the most able students into medical and academic higher education, I think we're a long way from having a "bottomless pit" of engineering graduates!

there's the disruptive change of electric vehicles looming

Exactly, whole new industries we havn't even thought of yet are just around the corner, not just electric vehicles, but there'll be other new developments that have the same kind of massive impact. These industries need people at the top to do the R&D and design etc. A couple of decades ago, we didn't know iphones and ipads were on the way but now they employ hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, not just making them (as mostly made by robots), but most will be working in R&D, new product development, design, etc. That's where the top calibre people are needed and the UK just doesn't produce enough of them.