To say that university degrees are barely impressive anymore?

[PithyKhakiShaker]

It feels like degrees are everywhere now and half the time they don’t guarantee anything - not a good job, not better thinking skills, not even basic literacy sometimes. Obviously education matters but AIBU to think degrees have become so common and so varied in quality that they aren’t as impressive or meaningful as they used to be?

Totally agree

I think the prestige of the institution is usually the most important thing, and these degrees are still valued accordingly. Not a popular thing to say, but true.

Interestingly I think the tide is changing from the ‘no degree, no interview’ catch 22 of ten years ago - to employers not really valuing them as the basic requirement of any job any more.

That is a positive thing - a huge life-long debt for a meaningless qualification doesn’t seem to be a sensible route for most.

Disagree. Though obviously it depends to a large extent on the degree and the university.
Increasing university attendance to 50ish percent was always going to cause differentiation.

Click wrong button should be yanbu sorry but no it’s a bit of paper that’s ten a penny now. Need to do it to tick a box. Apprentices are more valued in my eyes x

The Blair government made a huge mistake in pushing every one towards a degree. In the 1990s I was a manager in an insurance company and we recruited school leavers and graduates in large numbers. There was very little to choose between them, neither had any real life experience. If anything the graduates lacked a work ethic and expected to be better paid/promoted just for having a degree

my friends daughter took an apprenticeship with a large accountants and now is fully qualified, earns a good wedge and is debt free

I’m encouraging both mine to go to uni, mainly because the careers they want require degrees to qualify so it’s worth the money. I went up to MSC and would argue that it got me through the door for a lot of jobs but everyone’s experience is different.

Love to see someone teach a class without a degree!

Totally agree. In 2023 30% of graduates got a First. 48% got a 2:1. Totally meaningless if 78% of students gain the highest grades!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/676995/university-degree-awards-uk/

It would shock you to know how often teacher assistants cover classes, particularly in primary schools. I have several family members and friends who work in schools, the more senior the teacher the less they are actually in front of the class...not talking an hour at a time occasionally but full days every week when the teacher is sick, doing planning, in meetings, writing reports (safeguarding etc rather than child assessment)....

Great they can have a stab at GCSE maths if they like then!

Having a more educated population shouldn’t be a problem really.
More students take their degrees seriously nowadays because they pay for them.

Many many people go on to varied, interesting careers after a degree.

Ours teens want degrees, it’s part of their plan to escape the UK. We fully support (and most likely will fully fund) this endeavour.

A good grade of degree, in a proper subject, from a proper university, backed up by impressive A levels is still valuable.

Unfortunately a lot of major employers can't ask which university an applicant went to and some cannot ask the class of degree.

I don’t think you can generalise, they did become a bit tick boxy but so did the recruitment process
I think as with everything it depends what it’s on, where it’s from and what you’ve done with it and what the job is.
I wouldn’t give someone a job just because they had a degree but if they demonstrated skills that they had learnt on that degree then I’d be interested

I’m a bit biased as you generally need several degrees to do my profession but those degrees alone don’t get you a job it’s demonstrating what you’ve taken & can apply from that education and can add value to the job I’m offering.

most of the candidates I’ve met do have better skills but then we have highly regulated professional degrees so a lot of those skills are definitely there or you wouldn’t get the degree.

I also work with a lot of impressive people without degrees (allied jobs)
I am still impressed by degrees but context makes a massive difference as to how much

Yeah I think they are becoming less and less valuable due to a number of factors.

One is that as the costs of the degree increase, that has to be balanced against the benefits. Where I live, I am seeing a lot of young people in trades doing better - the young fellow that bought my last house was 24, he had finished an apprenticeship and worked for a year, no debt. So he now has a starter home and the ability to fix it up, he could sell and do well from the sale in 5 years. While many people I know who have been to university are not in a position to even think about a home until closer to 30. That's a big difference.

So imo it's over saturation of the job market, often for jobs that don't really require the degree. The direct expense of the degree plus the time lost from working and earning.

And then the worst part, many degrees themselves have been watered down to the point that they are not producing better thinkers (in fact they may be much poorer thinkers.) And no one really sees them as adding much. So your good students are screwed too as the classes are shit.

It wouldn’t be possible to get a job in my industry without a university degree. In fact, it’s hard to get a job without a postgraduate degree.

Dh works in a traditional trade, the sort of thing lots of people do as a hobby. Think like glassblowing. He can do the trade without a degree. In fact, none of the guys who work for him have any university education. Dh has a business degree, in addition to training in the trade. Honestly, the difference between working 40 hours a week doing hard manual labour for £30k a year and being a company director who works a leisurely 20 hours a week on management and admin for £100k+ a year is the business training he got at uni. It’s not the ‘degree’ per se, but it was the experience in how to build and manage a successful business and the work experience opportunities it opened up initially.

That said, I do think the primary benefit of uni is the social experience. The people I know who haven’t gone have had quite limited life experiences after school. Some of them are still living at home between 6-12 month stints working abroad or backpacking, or they went straight from school to marriage and babies and low wage work. I think just because it’s possible to get good high paying jobs now without a degree doesn’t mean a lot of people, especially women, actually do.

Not all degrees are the same, obviously. Some are still rather impressive ( I couldn't manage nanophysics at Cambridge, could you?) but on the whole it's the basic qualification needed for anything vaguely good.

Whyever not? I've always asked, I can't see how you wouldn't. You're hardly going to advance anyone who doesn't volunteer the info anyway.

I don't believe the university is anywhere near as important as people think. In 30 years of recruitment, I can only think of 1 client who specifically asked for 'red brick'. I have occasionally had clients turn their noses up at oxbridge which I guess isn't surprising but it's easy enough to get them to look beyond their prejudice and look at the person/experience.

Well I’ve got a degree I worked hard for so I’m happy.

It's all to do with equality and diversity under the thinking that people who are less privileged would not go to the "good" universities although some of these universities give lower offers under widening access.
Is a degree from Nottingham harder than a degree from Nottingham Trent with its lower entrance requirements

Having a degree is still an entry requirement to so many jobs. They're not defunct yet.

Where they're from very much depends on the sector.

Depends on the subject
look at the employment stats - there are some degrees where 100% of graduates are in a role related to their degree 12 months after finishing.
It’s worth doing the research

This is why it matters which university you go to and what subject you study. A good degree in an academic subject from a respected institution still counts for a lot. I do agree, though, that some degrees won't really get you any further than if you didn't have them.

Having a degree used to sort the wheat from the chaff. Now everyone and his uncle has one. Thank you Blair.

Then the kids are taking Masters degrees as well. What a waste of money.

I’m an employer and the universities are absolutely milking it, causing kids to think if they don’t have a Masters, they’re losing out in the employability stakes. Which is rubbish. It’s to get more money for the university.

There’s a place for a degree, a place for vocational, a place for an apprenticeship. We should be rolling it all back to get somewhere like we used to be in the 80s, just before I did my degree. It was free then though.