Why do so many organisations now require degrees and other Hugh level qualifications for what are administrative roles?

[Freedfromdesire]

Noticed this recently whilst job hunting. So many administrative positions seem to require a really high level of qualification? Why is this? What’s changed?

The number of graduates around. In my day ( !!!) only 2% of school leavers went to university, I think it is nearing 50% now. So jobs that asked for A levels now want degrees. They don't need them but it's a way of reducing the applicant pool to manageable proportions!

As above. Plenty of people have degrees nowadays, so they ask for people with degrees and know they don’t have to pay them so much.

Supply and demand. When degrees were in short supply you had to pay a lot for a graduate. Now you can have a graduate on the cheap.

Ok, maybe not 2%, that's a slight underestimate! I think it was actually 12%

Because they can :-(

Administrator is a highly dutied role, why would you not require high qualifications for it?

It really needs to change. Young people shouldn't be required to spend 3 years at university and incur massive debt (whether they end up paying it off or not, it hangs over them) just to do a basic admin role. University used to be free, but now it costs around £30K.

Totally agree - admin jobs really don't need degrees but I find that depending on the sector and role, the degree or higher level education experience helps to understand the wider aspects of the organisation or service users needs. For example many civil service admin roles don't need a degree to actually do the role but you are more likely to get an interview if you have one - whether or not they ask for it.

I got a job straight from A levels. Now days the same post is advertised as a graduate job. So people have to miss out on 3 years worth of earnings and get 3 years worth of unecessary debt in course fees.
I know employers can but its like having to pay to go to work.

Did Hugh Laurie sit Hugh Levels?

What SpanielEyes said (although, unless you are about 104, I think the number is more likely to be somewhere between 6 and 10% )

When I left school after my O-levels, there were plenty of good, 'white collar' jobs you could apply for - in banks, insurance, etc as well as admin. type roles, book-keeping and so forth. Now, somehow society having persuaded getting on for 50% of people they can get a degree, you can't get those jobs without a degree.
It becomes a circle then. People that don't particularly want to go to University get forced to, as there are no appropriate jobs that they can apply for as school leavers (at 16 or 18), so then even more so, the jobs that require a certain level of literacy, organisation, computer literacy etc, start being advertised as degree level entry.
Overwhelmingly graduates in the last 5 years or so, excluding those with voactional degrees (Health, teaching, engineering) have been unable to get what historically have been seen as degree level jobs as the market is flooded with so many graduates.

I'm an administrator. It's actually more difficult than my job as a retail buyer was. People don't tend to hire whole people just to do repetitive tasks like filing and taking phone messages.

What the others have said, when I started Uni in 1990, it was about 10% of people who went.

Then all the polytechnics and colleges were allowed to call themselves universities and offer degrees too, now everyone has one. And some of the "new" universities will take people with very low grades indeed. Employers aren't daft though, they know that a 2:1 in Maths or Biology from somewhere like York or Edinburgh is in no way comparable to a 2:1 in Criminology or Sociology from Buckinghamshire Chilterns or Bolton.

Nope it has nothing to do with any of that.

The reason why employers demand degrees is because it limits the number of applicants.

In an age where many jobs get 150+ applicants you can easily slim that down by making one of the criteria a degree.

Many people still don’t have degrees and many who apply for admin roles are older so not necessarily of graduate age.

An admin job really doesn’t require degree level qualifications, added to which, it’s a bit of a farce to suggest that any degree is good enough just as long as it’s a degree. Someone who has worked in a role for 10 years doesn’t need a degree to prove their worth.

And more and more students aren’t going to uni these days so it will have to change.

Yep degree is lowest level of education accepted in any jobs I’ve applied for the last few years (office manager type roles!)

I'm an administrator and didn't even get GCSEs 😂😂 so voted YABU

So many jobs require degree level status. The majority were just A'level status in years gone by.
I think it's because too many students are now degree level.

The job market is so competitive now that employers can ask for a degree for an admin role and still get plenty of applications.

Also, it depends what you mean by an administrative job. Filing and answering the phone don't really need a degree. However lots of jobs described as 'admin' actually require a good understanding of the work of the organisation/company, ability to understand relevant law or government policy, ability to carry out research, or analyse data - all skills that a degree might be expected to confer. Even when recruiting an entry level position, the company may hope to find an individual with the potential to work their way up into a more senior role.

Employers just have too many people to choose from nowadays, we are overpopulated.

Also having a degree shows you will stick at something and you were committed to finishing the course etc!!

Plus my degree had heaps of useful stuff in it for my office manager job - a hr module, marketing module for example - which has come in super useful at work as we are a small business so I Do a lot of the marketing and HR -

So, in your eyes, these jobs are so basic that they definitely don't require a degree.......yet you want to do these (in your eyes) basic jobs rather than looking for something you might find more challenging..........but the people offering these "basic" jobs aren't interested in you - let alone employers offering the more challenging jobs.

Must be confusing in your head trying to work all that out.

Do you think it might be a case of it "not being them, but being you"?

I think employers have found a way to transfer some of their training costs on to the individual. There seemed to be a lot more on the job training and day release stuff when I was younger.

I recruited for a civil service admin job and had over 500 applicants for a job paying £20k. Most of them had degrees. The job market is a mess and set to get worse this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if unemployment hits 10%+

We've been recruiting for entry admin roles recently, starting salary £24k.

Had about 45 applications in December and only a couple without degrees or any relevant experience.

We would only consider someone without a degree if they had a lot of experience in a similar role already.

A degree has lost its value. Most people dont even want to do them. That's why universities bend over backwards to pass students who are not even capable.

I know many people who are nursery workers who have degrees too. It's a sham.