to blame Tony Blair for the lack of skilled workforce?

[dunkaccino]

In the 1980's only 15% of school leavers went into higher education leaving a good lot of people to become tradesmen/HGV drivers/butchers etc. Tony Blair decided in 1999 that 50% going to University was a great aim, which was finally achieved in 2019.

Now we have a lack of everyone useful - electricians, carpenters, fitters, engineers, butchers, drivers - coupled with a multitude of unskilled mickey mouse degree graduates who are of no practical use to anyone.

Covid & brexit have undeniably both played a part, but AIBU to think that Blairs idea was basically a bit shit and has left us lacking in the skilled workforce needed to run the country?

The 1992 financial crisis caused firms to cancel apprenticeship schemes & industry never completely recovered from that. There's a missing generation in many industries.

The real problem is a system which makes people decide what they want to do aged 14 and then lock them into a straightjacket until they are 70. But then when the only tool you have is a hammer (in this case the UK education system) then all problems look like nails.

@onlychildhamster which part of my post do you think is untrue?

I find it hard to believe that everyone who drew up playing computer games is naturally drawn to working in an office.

I'm not sure how old you are but myself and my husband also grew up playing computer games so that's anecdotal evidence that it's not a reason to want to work in an office. It's an individual choice.

I strongly believe that as a society we don't value tradespeople, or see them as equals to those people who work in offices. I've literally experienced it first hand, many many times.

A good example would be the customers who (pre covid too) won't allow trades to use their bathroom or who deliberately leave £20 notes on the side to 'test' their honesty.
Apparently the tradesman has to trust this same person to pay the bill at the end of the job (for which the tradesman is already out of pocket, having bought materials etc).

Another problem with the target of getting more young people into university is that courses which weren't strictly academic suddenly had higher barriers to entry. Nursing is a prime example - it's a hugely skilled job but requiring a nursing degree meant students had to get into huge amounts of debt rather than getting a vocational qualification...and the wages didn't increase on the other side quickly enough to justify it.

coupled with a multitude of unskilled mickey mouse degree graduates who are of no practical use to anyone

I'm not blaming anyone, but the above is true I think.

Too many people studying degrees that are useless - and if they are useless, they are potentially harmful, that's the problem

I think there has long been problems with the actual vocational schemes - unsurprisingly with consecutive shit governments of both parties.

I have experience in my family of hairdressing, for example.

My own hairdresser told me he stopped having juniors. The paperwork was ridiculous, and several of them jacked it in early for higher paid shop or call centre work.

A family member with their own salon was asked to be an assessor for a college. He said the standards were really low, and following the assessment criteria, he’d have to pass people that he wouldn’t ever employ in the most junior training position.

Well now there are degrees in managing social media, so you’re not wrong about Micky mouse degrees

Except we live in a world of 24/7 globally connected media, that’s has just exploded over the last 20 years.

Calling Media Srudies a Mickey Mouse degree is so out of touch with today’s world. Global media/tech has taken over the world. It needs lots of people to run it. It’s pathetic that it’s considered a less worth degree in the current media climate.

Global media/tech has taken over the world. It needs lots of people to run it

This is true, but does it need to be a degree though, I'm not sure

The posters above have nailed it. We are primarily a service/retail/hospitality and digital economy now. Manufacturing jobs and trades due to technology, automation, outsourcing and global markets have led to less and less people going into these and being suitable for these industries. There needs to be some acceptance that many who would normally enter these industries may unfortunately have to diversify, upskill academically or learn new skills in professions that are currently in demand in our economy. There is of course still a demand for the traditional trades but it’s now outstripped by demand for more service, digital and hospitality jobs.

With so many people with degrees, it’s now seen as the minimum educational standard for many jobs, even if the nature of the work doesn’t explicitly require higher education.

Lots of graduates are now doing jobs that would normally have been filled by those who didn’t go to university. In a sense, graduates are reluctantly evolving/adapting to the changing economy by accepting jobs at a lower pay than they are probably academically qualified for due to oversaturation of graduates and a reduction in the pay of professional job roles that is deliberately kept low by the government against the market forces of supply and demand e.g. teachers, junior doctors etc.

And back in the day, it used to be the case that even those who were not naturally academic and entered good jobs in trades and apprenticeship schemes used to still have reasonable competency in maths and literacy, at least to the minimum standard required, and had a keen work ethic to boot. Nowadays, that’s getting rarer and rarer hence why lots of employers are advertising for graduates just to get this minimum standard even if the job role doesn’t need a degree whatsoever. It’s like a shift in the window.

Basically, competition has increased fiercely for pretty much everyone in every pay bracket, every class and every level of education. There’s not really a defined working class and middle class anymore in terms of either job role or salary. Trades and construction can pay more than teachers and solicitors and scientists and GP’s and class is much more fluid.

Well someone has to do it.

The thing is everyone slags off media degrees. But if you talk to career people, they say they have a huge employability rating.

Do people really need degrees in English too? I mean if media studies isn’t important why is English?

It used to be the whole point of getting a degree was more learning the rigour needed to research and collate and present rather than the actual subject itself.

That's why almost no one I worked with senior to me in the 80s actually had a degree in sciences - let alone maths - despite being shit hot programmers.

After all, if you leave Uni at 21, then by age 31 75% of what you learned will be out of date. And age 41 it will be plain wrong. So a brief 3 year toe-dip in the ocean of knowledge has to be put into context.

@bogeythefungusman

Many clerical jobs which would have been open to school leavers now 'require' a degree.

Tradespeople can pretty much name their price as they are in such short supply.

This. Get into £50k of debt to do a job that only needed “O” levels when I left school - what an incredible con. I think the tide’s turning and young people are beginning to realise they’re being conned. Particularly when they see how well trades people are paid. It’s shocking the way 21st century society looks down on its most useful and essential members.

Technical universities could be the language to use? I love my plumber and electrician. I could almost kiss them when they turn up to fix some issue I have.

I am in awe as to how they fix things.

I’m now late 30s and very few of the political opinions I formed in my teens still stand. This is one of them (apart from the being Blair’s fault part).

As others have said, the route for entering into vocational training is clear as fecking mud. Whereas all signposts point to university and the website to get yourself a big fat loan to pay for it all.

Well, there was this chap called Gove, who tinkered with education and focused everything on academic subjects. He could have looked at countries which value and fund vocational and skilled trade education and followed their example, but he didn't.

Remind me, which party has been in power for over 10 years now?

Get into £50k of debt
But it’s not debt, not really. It doesn’t count when borrowing for eg a mortgage and if you don’t earn much you won’t pay any of it back. Most won’t pay all of it. It’s a graduate tax really.

I think the issue is that there were very few apprenticeships available. Even now, the apprenticeships that are available are ( anecdotally) often very poorly managed, even with outfits that should know better, like local councils. But for more than 20 years, there was very little training for tradespeople available.

Oh, here comes pointy and the UK/Tory bashers. Watch out

This attitude always makes me laugh. I work with people from a lot of industrial and professional services and have heard this totted our many times over the years, usually from the privileged and well educated or from senior managers. The conversation generally goes something like this -

Industry person: "There are too many young people going to university, we need more to do apprenticeships or to go into entry level jobs"

Me: "I see, and what will you be advising your own children to do when the time comes?"

IP: "Oh, well, they'll be going to University of course"

See, it's always someone else's kids who need to ditch the idea of university in favour of a badly paying apprenticeship in the hope that they might just a break in a few years and won't hit a career ceiling 10 years down the line because they don't have a degree, never theirs.

Technical universities could be the language to use?

There could perhaps be one year of general knowledge and two years of technical skills learning?

a badly paying apprenticeship

Plumbers, locksmiths or builders are not badly paid at all

@Catforaheadrest its not just for vocational training. My husband has a younger sister who is not academically inclined at all and has failed her GCSEs multiple times. She was interested in getting into the police (London Met) but she got ill and was unable to do her physical assessments. She does have a chronic illness, Crohns and maybe being a policewoman is not the best career for her but the selection process seemed quite difficult with very few allowances made for her physical condition. She has also said it is very hard to get into an apprenticeship.

On the other hand, there are so many pathways to get into university. Not just the traditional A level route but also diplomas which allow you to get into university on a fast tracked route. I can see why for a young person, applying to university is much more attractive than being rejected everywhere.

The thing is though university degrees do not hold the value they used to and l have heard many people coming out of uni and still not being able to get their desired jobs.

But certainly we can't all be rocket scientists. If these crucial roles paid a living wage perhaps more people would take them up.

The drivers thing is complicated- perfect storm of low uptake for new drivers and many leaving the sector.
It's expensive to learn, it's lonely, you get treated badly at depots in lots of cases, your lifestyle is impacted, your diet is impacted, you're viewed as a commodity by society, there are more attractive roles to go into as an early career decision.
People leaving - Driver's CPC necessity lost a good few years ago, average age is 56 , Brexit caused so many complications, as did the EU tacho laws before it thus limiting hours and therefore earning potential, IR35 bring latest reason to hang up your keys. And it's uncomfortable, lonely, disrespected and bloody hard work.

I think the tide’s turning and young people are beginning to realise they’re being conned.

DS said aged 16 (he's 25 now) that there was no way he'd go to university as it was a rip off. What started putting him off was an open evening from our local Universities (you'd be surprised how many you have ...) when not a single example of graduate being held up had anything to do with making peoples lives better. But then - as the spokesperson pointed out to the audience; you don't go to university to make other peoples lives better - you go to make your life better.