Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2

Original poster

To think that getting into a top course/uni isn't even worth it?

43 replies

historyusernameyour · 13/12/2018 21:55

AIBU to think that working your arse off to be able to study medicine/dentistry or going to Oxbridge/Imperial etc, is not really worth it anymore. When you consider how crazily high house prices are, that unless living in deepest rural Wales then even those top graduates won't be able to afford a high level of living.

If you think back to my generation (50s) or my parents, becoming a professional led to a very nice lifestyle. This same lifestyle is out of reach for all those bar the extremely high earners, think £200k plus income. But even so, for graduates to achieve a similar level of lifestyle to people of previous generations they'll have to work every hour under the sun.

Are there any careers that are really worth working that hard in?

OP posts:

bridgetreilly · 14/12/2018 00:01

All the greedy ones leave for America.

FTFY, Racecardriver.

CountFosco · 14/12/2018 00:03

I was reading about if higher education was worthwhile and apparently for girls it always is because the typical 'female' job that non-graduates get tend to be very low pay. For men it's not so clearcut because there are more 'male' jobs that non-graduates get that have decent pay, e.g. being a plumber. Obviously women can do those trade jobs as well but the numbers doing so are still very low. And obviously being a plumber pays well but there isn't the security (generous sick pay etc) and pension that you get in a profession.

As far as house affordability goes, we seem to have plenty of new graduates at work from modest backgrounds (first graduate in the family etc) who seem to be able to get on the property ladder fairly easily. Of course I live in the NE so house prices are low.

negomi90 · 14/12/2018 00:09

Article last month on the bbc about this - top course and top uni pays off financially, but it depends on course and uni. Medicine boosts earnings by a lot, whichever uni you go to. Creative Arts at Cambridge - not a financial winner.
At 28, I'm attempting to save for a house (a few years away), but I have far more money than my mum had at my age. I have a financial cushion, I don't worry about bills or food or emergencies, I have access to holidays. I can't imagine many other jobs/degrees which would have suited my personality and would give me my financial prospects.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46345527

AmyDowdensLeftLeftShoe · 14/12/2018 00:10

OP you presuming that people who go to those institutions and do those degrees will only ever stay living in the UK. Plenty of my family and friends, including me myself have lived and worked abroad for varying periods. Some are even abroad now and due to the state of the NHS, those in medical fields are unlikely to come back. Without our degrees we wouldn't be able to stay on the same career path.

AmyDowdensLeftLeftShoe · 14/12/2018 00:12

@bridgetrielly all the ones I know go to Australia and Canada. It is the IT and business graduates that mainly go to the US.

RightOcciputAnterior · 14/12/2018 00:40

I grew up in a fairly disadvantaged area and attended a bog standard comprehensive school. I studied Medicine and am now a doctor. I'm comfortably off, but I certainly don't have a lavish lifestyle.

However, if I hadn't become a doctor, I'd never have met my husband - also a doctor, but from a much more traditional medical background (public school, wealthy parents). To be blunt, when his parents die we will get a sizeable inheritance, probably to the extent that we won't have to worry about our day-to-day living expenses ever again. Furthermore, DH is cultured and confident in a way that my education didn't teach me, so my child will grow up with much more cultural capital than I have.

Depressingly, marrying my husband is the single most socially mobile thing I'll ever do.

Education is a route out of poverty in all kinds of ways.

Kisskiss · 14/12/2018 01:06

You’re wrong... cost of living is high, and most people can’t expect to be able to buy a house in the first year, even with a great paying graduate job, but, that great graduate job leads to decent career progression and they will be able to afford a nice lifestyle in about 3-5 years, anywhere in the uk.
So even if we are talking purely about money, a top degree is still a necessity if you want to work in a company... obviously doesn’t matter if you decide to go down the entrepreneur route! Which as we have seen can be very rewarding as well...

Schmoobarb · 14/12/2018 01:11

I wouldn’t say it wasn’t worth it but I totally get what you mean.

alwayscrashinginthesamecar1 · 14/12/2018 01:44

I think all your doctors are in Oz. A new medical practice opened up at the end of my street last year, whole family of doctors from Brum. They told me the working standards in the NHS are so bad everyone who is in a position to leave is getting out.

ErrolTheDragon · 14/12/2018 01:48

YABU.

Studying a subject you love at a good university is worth doing of itself, and those who do so (some subjects more than others), will be more employable than others. Not just more lucrative jobs, but more interesting ones.

user1471548941 · 14/12/2018 01:59

History degree from a top London uni, notorious for being harder to get into than Oxbridge.

One of only 3 state school pupils in my cohory, only got a 2.2 but 5 years later I work for a top investment bank (working day is usually 9.30-6 so not even too bad) and have bought a house in the SE for just under £200k, alone. Okay it’s only a 1 bed, but at 26, I’m pleased with myself.

I work hard and my job can be stressful but it’s not constant, just coming up to deadlines is hard. My earning potential is pretty unlimited depending on what choices I make over my career. I wouldn’t have been offered this job without a 2.2 for my uni. Didn’t get on the grad scheme so just took an entry level job and worked my way up. It opens so many doors, is a talking point in interviews and instantly marks me out as ‘bright’, never a bad thing!

So good degree + hard work will do you will, striving for a top place is worth it. Just make sure the course suits you as the key part of mine was being interested in the content.

Tweakanddashi · 14/12/2018 07:54

DH and I are both doctors, NHS only, been working 18 years. We're ok financially. But our neighbours are builders, second hand car showroom owners, owners of a dog grooming business and other small business owners. They haven't been to university to get these jobs and seem to have more money for cars and holidays and nice clothes. They can also take time off work for school plays and things without having to take leave. So I think that medicine is good but not the only route.
We probably so have more job security at the moment, although who knows with AI and privatisation what will happen.

PebbleDashed · 14/12/2018 08:03

All those talking about how studying for a degree you love and doing a job for love have obviously never lived on the other side of Britain, where we have to work for a living with no inheritances or family money or personal security blankets. And working for a living is fast becoming a mug's game in Britain.

OneStepMoreFun · 14/12/2018 08:12

It's massively important. If you or your DC can aim that high, apply! As user says - that qualification marks you out as exceptionally bright for life. It never leaves your CV. You get taken seriously in interviews and at work.

ZoeWashburne · 14/12/2018 08:12

I went to a top RG uni. The wide international alumni network and the connections of the career services was fantastic in helping me land a job in the industry I wanted.

NemoRocksMyWorld · 14/12/2018 08:31

I understand where the op is coming from. I went to Cambridge and studied medicine. I am now a paediatric registrar. We are ok because we have had family help to get on housing ladder, but would be seriously struggling without.

One of my best friends is also a paediatric registrar and her husband is a policeman. They don't have family help. They have just been able to afford a tiny two bed. They struggle to make ends meet. Twenty years ago, a doctor and a police man would have been relatively much better off. The worst thing is when everyone heard you are a doctor they assume you are rolling in it..... When that is really not the case at all!

Nevertheless, it is still worth working hard and getting a good degree, because it gives you control over your life. At the end of the day, I chose to be a doctor and I choose to continue. I have a good oxbridge degree and if I wanted to get a different job, I could. If you don't have that behind you, it feels to me like that control its taken away? So maybe you end up doing a job purely because it is the only job you can get, rather than because it is your choice. And maybe you get lucky and start your own super successful business, or fall into an excellent well paid job but maybe you don't, and you end up scraping by on minimum wage.

At the end of the day, I get to do a fulfilling job, I enjoy. I will have a job for life, if I want one. The job is relatively well respected and the pay is probably just about adequate.... I think that's probably worth working for, on balance.

MedSchoolRat · 14/12/2018 10:05

When I interview applicants (for med school) they almost never mention the money. I kind of wish they did (would at least be honest!).

They tend to SAY in the interviews that they are motivated coz they think it will be a satisfying career, great blend of science & interacting with people. They like bossing teams around & they don't want a boring or office-job. They (say or are coached to say that they) badly want the challenges. They want to take decisions & see the whole of patient's pathway (why not be a nurse or in an allied profession). Maybe 1/3 have background as patients themselves, or helping someone in the family deal with a chronic condition, so they are tuned into knowing that they like this kind of role.

it seems to me like hard work is involved in obtaining success whatever your industry is.

ErrolTheDragon · 14/12/2018 10:49

it seems to me like hard work is involved in obtaining success whatever your industry is.

Yes; I'll take a bet the successful builders etc work bloody hard.

I think the OP has it wrong. It's worth working hard in whichever field works for the individual- academically, temperamentally, physically.

It's absolutely 'worth' working hard to get onto a good degree course if it fits those criteria - good being an intersection of good uni and good subject. Oxbridge almost any subject, engineering many unis, STEM subjects quite a lot of unis type of thing.

But for many, they'd be better off not going to university ... trouble is there aren't enough alternative training paths.

What there isn't, in any of this, a route to a nice lifestyle if you're not prepared to work hard.

Flip

1 2