...to think needing a degree to progress is an outdated way of thinking?

[Iflippinghateplaydoh]

I (clearly) don't have a degree, I left 6th form and went to a business college and then spent 6 years working as a manager in my 20s.
I moved companies and went to a non-management role but a lot more money.
Now in early 30s and my children are at school I'd love to progress back into a manager role at this company that I've been at for 5 years (of which there are many manager roles here) however as I don't have a degree it's impossible.
Open uni will take me years

Although there's nothing I can do to change it, AIBU to feel like experience should be taken into account sometimes rather than saying "without a degree you can't go anywhere".

I love the company and am so frustrated as I'm more than capable and have been told so on many occasions, but if they accept 1 in without a degree it opens up a whole new can of worms so they won't budge.

Is this standard across most industries?

Or AIBU to think it's a bit of an old fashioned way of thinking?

I also notice that there are many employers who will, as a matter of course, demand a degree and a whole raft of other qualifications that aren't at all relevant to the particular job; but they will still only actually want to pay a salary commensurate with the job itself, with no additional financial acknowledgement or incentive for your having the unnecessary qualifications.

"We seek: outstanding candidates, the creme de la creme, with phenomenal drive, solid proven qualifications and experience, an unstinting commitment to the requirements of a relentlessly demanding job, the ability to hit the ground running whilst excelling at the highest level in every single KPI area and who view anything less than 100% perfection as a public sign of complete personal failure."

"We pay: 23p more than NMW."

it's supply and demand, employers only need to pay market rates.
If you have experience, or qualification, in a very rare skill, you can ask for anything. If they are 100 strong applicants for the same job, no need to pay more than your competitors

@PamelaX I think you're on to something there

When I'm recruiting I couldn't care less about degrees. Experience is all that matters for mid/senior roles, and willingness to learn the job and work hard is all that matters for trainees.

I think you're going to have to move to another company if you want to progress OP. It sounds very odd that they won't consider you for promotion if you do have the skills and experience. I personally wouldn't want to spend the time and money on an unnecessary degree course.

It depends on the degree. If your 18 and want to get into management you are not going to learn everything you need quickly by shadowing are you so therefore study is vital

Dd at 18 was made a manager at her p/t job.
The work is in the service industry and is mainly about common sense and being able to talk to people.

Dd has to train up the ones coming through with the degree in this particular field.

Yes they know certain stuff that they learned at university. But Dd picked that sort of stuff up over a couple of days.
But they don’t know how to interact with the public which is the main part of the job.

Some of the people she has chatted to as part of her job have gone on to offer her jobs on £40,000 + per year to come in and manage departments in their company.

Dd has declined their offer because she doesn’t want to work in an office environment.

Thanks for all the responses. I wish I could print this and show to HR! It is very short sighted I agree and some of the points raised are so right!
Yes they stipulate it has to be a minimum 2:1 degree, no equivalents.
The pay grade goes up by £40,000 so they think that this is the fairest way of rewarding those in uni debt.
The most frustrating thing was seeing my colleague get promoted due to her 2:1 in American history, yet I couldn't even apply for the same job despite studying at a business college and having the 5 years of management experience.
Its a large multinational company that everyone has heard of and not degree specific at all. The directors above the managers who I currently report to are frustrated by the rules also but it's a decision made by CEOs in this country and other countries. So way above any of us to change.

Minimum wage jobs in retail and office admin will be demanding a post graduate qualification soon!

As more jobs become automated, people without the required skills and qualifications are going to be unemployed. Millions of people in the UK. Even “professional” jobs will be automated, at least in part.

Polarbearflavour the problem is those with the degrees as Dd has found might have learned some obscure details which everyone without a degree would say was common sense anyway. Don’t actually know how to talk to people which is 99% of the job.

This is something that can’t be taught.

It is not uncommon for these people to actually say they couldn’t do dds job because they wouldn’t know what to say to people.

The irony being that this is what they have run up £30,000 worth of debt and spent 3 years at university learning to do yet don’t have the personality to do it.

Dd would love to know what it is that they were taught that took 3 years to teach when she picked up the job in 2 shifts.

Depends on the type of work I think. My husbands old role specified they only take people who graduated from certain universities and surprise, only the ones with phd’s were promoted......

Totally agree but it is a very common attitude these days, I had a temporary job once in a recruitment agency (I do have a degree but absolutely no relevance to any job I have ever done ) and one of my tasks was to just sift through the applications and discard any without a degree . No one else even looked at the applications and you could tell people had put loads of effort into them. I am now encouraging my DS to go to Uni just as an essential step in his education.

I have an issue with Ds who wants to learn a trade.

He has finished his course already as he passed all his exams and tests (average score of 97.5%) in college and is looking for an apprenticeship to start in September.

In the meantime he is about to start work on a project himself.

He is re taking his English GCSE and we have been told without his English GCSE despite having excellent scores in the subject he wants to turn into a career he won’t be able to progress further.

Yet the government are crying out for trades people.

It's the modern rather than the old fashioned way, unfortunately. These days you increasingly need a degree to be allowed to blow your own nose.

Oliversmum You're obviously very proud of your DD but you come over as very scathing generalising about people with degrees as having no personality and no common sense. It is obviously not true. Education doesn't give or remove personality! Some people are better suited to the workplace, some people find the experience of university immensely valuable.

Every individual should be assessed on their merits. If learning is required as part of the job, then a degree provides some evidence of that. A candidate without a degree will have to find a way to prove to the employer they have the ability to learn. A candidate who has worked full time has proved their ability to attend work - I do interview graduates who are surprised that they are expected to arrive at 9 and work until 5pm. (Seems to be some weird idea that every workplace offers flexitime and home working - I need teams of engineers onsite installing equipment on client premises! You can't rock up at 11am and make up the time when the client has closed) But that's a life lesson that people will learn.

And if your daughter did indeed pick up a job in 2 shifts that meant she was receiving job offers worth £40k then it's a very unusual job or she has some unique talent....

I agree it's shit. Some of the most able oeople I've worked with don't have one blah blah. Do a degree. The years will pass quickly. Your perspective will change in a good way (in whatever way), It will open doors. It will maybe give you different ideas of what you want to do and new opportunities.

Ragwort The problem with that is the ones leaving university and getting the jobs are pretty much incapable of doing the job they supposedly trained for.

In the last week I have spoken with degree holders and all I can say is if they are the cream who got the job then what were the ones who didn’t get the job like.

I do know one guy who runs a successful company who refuses to even look at people with a degree.

I didn’t go to university at 18, I went to work in a large law firm who eventually moved me to London. By 22 I had a pretty good job, until my boss sat me down and said I’d hit the ‘ceiling’ and couldn’t go further without a degree, or an ILEX qualification. I think in MOST professional careers (solicitors, accountants, teaching, finance, medical...this is the case)

I opted to do a degree, honestly I thought they were a waste of time. I bought into the idea that they were an expensive cop out for a generation of useless kids 🤔

I was wrong. Even at 22, with a few years of intense work experience (often working 14 hour + days) my degree was HARD!!! And I learnt MUCH more than I ever thought I would. The way I approach things, anylyse things, my reasoning skills, it was worth doing!

I think a GOOD degree is very much worth doing/having - but a lot of degrees now a days are a bit ‘mickey mouse’.

Although 🤔 I don’t quite get the ‘everyone has one now so they’re not work having’ argument. As surely the fact so many people have them means they’re becoming expected! I have a friend who doesn’t have a degree but a few years admin experience, she recently was made redundant and says she is now being blocked from applying for even basic admin jobs as the online applications REQUIRE you to input the details of your degree!

Is there some way of formalising your experience with a qualification? Fir example, if your field has a Chartered qualification could you look into doing that? In my field, there are “incorporated”, “technical” and “experience” fields which have longer qualifying periods, but don’t necessarily need a degree. Or look into day release/evening classes? You’ve got 30 or 40 years of work ahead of you. If not having a degree is holding you back now, then it may be a good investment of effort/time/money to do it.

Polarbearflavour I earn 20k in an office job and have a Masters degree, some of the younger people on 17k also have Masters degrees.

...But there are also people in my role that don’t have a degree at all, and management that don’t have a degree at all.

I think it probably depends on the company. Although I think most of the people I know with ‘good’ jobs and no degrees did lots of voluntary extra training/professional quals as day release...it shows keenness and ‘proves’ they know how to do stuff.
My dad is 57 and regularly volunteers to do new qualifications through work so it’s never too late.

Find a rival company that doesn’t have a stick up its collective arse
Haha I love that !!!!

I think having a degree shows that you learn to a certain level, but I do agree that if you have the experience it should not be needed at all.

A lot of people are going to uni, doing courses that will in no way be relevant to the direction they choose to go in career wise.

I'm not sure if uni should be the direction teenagers are encouraged to go in, getting into a lot of debt ( which you pay back with interest ) when really at that age, few know what they want to do.

Dd at 18 said this job wasn’t rocket science but you have to keep your eye on your staff at all times and you do have to make small talk to a lot of people and we have seen the threads on here about the number of people who don’t do small talk.

The reason she gets these job offers (despite only scraping a few GCSEs) is because she knows how to run things and people can see her dealing with difficult customers or difficult staff or just when someone has made a mistake.

Even in nursery she was known to tell the new assistants how to do there jobs.

I am probably more scathing of people with a degree. I have a friend (university lecturer) and what he has told me makes me wonder whether having a degree is worthwhile.

Granted he is probably very jaded from the new system of the “consumer”is always right

He comes from an era when getting a degree was a huge deal.

Also know someone who did all their child’s assignments at university because he insisted his child went to uni even though it was something she didn’t want to do.

Although I don't think a degree is everything, I do believe it does offer some extra skills & knowledge that you can't acquire in the workplace alone. (Questing, Analysing, Reasoning, .... -especially on paper - to name obvious ones)
As I understand it, the company is a multinational and has a clear set structure regarding the skills and job progression. It's a simple way "filtering" and keeping a certain level of professionalism.
Think about it. You are in a pool of people, all good at their job for various reasons. They all have been in the job between 3-5 years and know job / company well. All are hard working. Some have degrees others have qualifications and some have just work experience. Now you decide, how to go about selecting a manager that is able to think and reason, a manager that is respected and could could have potential beyond the management position.

Depends if your degree is specific to the industry or service you are in. I graduated in accounts and without this I would not have progressed in my career, having experience also does count so do not discount this but the two go hand in hand. Experience plus education takes you a long way. I studied hard at university and would not be pleased if someone with no qualifications was given presidency over me.

Now you decide, how to go about selecting a manager that is able to think and reason, a manager that is respected and could could have potential beyond the management position

I would go on personality.

Although everyone appears to be on one level there are those that set themselves apart because they treat their staff nicely and get the most out of them.

In this instance how someone chose to live their life at 18 shouldn’t mean anything.

I agree with a pp who said "Masters"
There's no point doing an undergraduate degree if you have the skills and experience to get a Masters degree. It's quicker, cheaper, and trumps an u.g degree
But I agree it's a crazy system.