Context is everything here!
For starters anyone who is a professional (in the traditional sense) needs to have at least 2 in most cases these days! Their undergrad and postgrad qualifications.
“A job for life” is no longer realistic for most for a variety of reasons so they may well have retrained in order to meet the demands of changing economy, personal circumstances etc
Some like learning for learnings sake and will have gained additional qualifications while working or caring for others, sometimes as a way to keep knowledge current.
A few are overgrown teens who are delaying entering the “real world” but then doesn’t that kind of apply to pretty much any tutor/lecturer/professor as they rarely leave academia?
and I really, really hate referencing. haha yes that is a pita!
I’m currently not working due to ill health and I’d LOVE to do some kind of postgrad as it’s driving me nuts not using my brain properly, but can’t get the funding plus some other obstacles.
I have 2 undergrad, one in nursing and one in English. Both done as a “mature” student mainly as I couldn’t afford to go to uni at 18, my parents had too much income for me to qualify for a grant, but dads an alcoholic so it was pissed away.
Partied more than I should have for the first one but still got a 2:2, 2nd I was more motivated (single mum by this point) and got a 2:1 narrowly missed out on a 1st which was frustrating.
Far more interested in English than the nursing which I did as a “pragmatic” decision but I hated working in the nhs in the end. Not the patients, the endless bureaucracy and nonsensical processes.
Pretty much most people I currently know in real life don’t even know! This can be “interesting” when hcps try and explain basic medical terms etc to me.
My friends and family greatly vary along the spectrum of “left school with no qualifications to speak of” to “crazy number of degrees+” roughly evenly in terms of numbers.
Equally I’ve met/known people with zero qualifications not even a cse or equivalent who are/were incredibly intelligent and people with phds who outside that specific subject were thick as 2 short planks! To the point I’ve wondered how the fuck they even got the qualification!
One job I had where my degree was the MINIMUM requirement for what seemed to be little more than a basic admin role puzzled me until I was actually working there, then it became apparent the reasons were two fold, one the degree knowledge was actually useful in a way that wasn’t apparent from the job description, the other was that to be totally honest anyone inhabiting the role who didn’t at least have an undergrad degree would possibly have felt quite overwhelmed by working with (and sometimes having to correct) people with multiple phds!
I definitely think there’s a generational element too. Mainly to do with employability.
When my grandparents left school they could pretty much walk into fairly well paid if not exactly cerebrally challenging jobs with zero qualifications or experience, my parents similarly didn’t need qualifications but were expected to have some kind of experience from part time work, my generation employers for even nmw (didn’t exist then of course) jobs expected at least 5 GCSEs at grade c or above including Maths and English. My daughter has just studying again after a few years out of education (long story) and working in a low paid but above nmw job and her generation seem to think you need at least an undergrad to have a hope of a decent job. Her plan is to eventually train as a teacher so she’ll need a pgce at least and in order to stand a hope at promotions/maintaining a decent career according to my friends/family who are teachers she’ll need to be seriously considering doing a masters or 2 and possibly phd.
Unless/until it becomes an employees market again (highly unlikely with automation etc) this trend will likely continue so probably my grandchildren will need to be able to qualify to phd level to have a hope at a decent job!