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?

I am just on my last assignment for a criminology and law degree which I have been doing with the Open University. I have four children and wanted to gain some qualifications to get back into work after being a stay at home mum. I did an access course first and then because of limitations with looking after kids I enrolled with the OU to do my degree. I have found it all really hard going but I am so glad I did it.. however, I’m not sure whether it will assist me in getting a full time job (work part time at the moment) because I am lacking experience!

Hmm. Maybe they did further specialist training or PhDs or something. But I’m surprised you genuinely thought someone studies medicine at uni and doesn’t get a degree. At my GP surgery all the doctors have their degrees after their names and where they got them from.

Am I the only one who thinks there is a value in higher education, and in having a highly educated population?

Highly educated people fare better on almost every metric, including health, wealth and life satisfaction, and countries with more highly educated populations fare better in terms of lifespan, gender equality and economic success.

Education is a great thing. Having A levels is "barely impressive" - should we stop education at 15, then? GCSEs are really not impressive at all, so therefore what is the value? How far back do you want to go? Why would you want an uneducated population?

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.

Surely it depends on your degree? I’m a nurse, my degree means that I have a good job, I like to think that I have good thinking skills and basic literacy (I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I wasn’t).

I work with people who went to top 5 universities as well as someone with a degree in interior design plumping cushions from the university of Sunderland. There is a marked difference. League tables should be respected but someone fell through the gaps.

That’s very generalising though. Yes there are some hopeless graduates. They aren’t hopeless because of their degree though. They’d be equally or more hopeless without their degree.
Equally, not having a degree doesn’t mean someone has a stronger work ethic or is more talented. People love to believe in underdogs so they like the narrative that the posh lazy toffs go to uni, drink and play polo for three years and then daddy gives them a job at his company but they can barely string a sentence together. While a super bright talented youngster doesn’t go to uni but has common sense and a strong work ethic and is constantly overlooked in favour of the graduate but is secretly way more talented. It’s not like that. You get some very talented and hard working graduates. You do also get some who aren’t. Same with those who leave school without going to uni.

I'd say it all depends on the organisation and the role. Say you are an international trading firm willing to look all over the world for the best graduate software engineers. You want someone who is going to be able to pick up a LOT of complex ideas at a very high level really quickly and easily, for example, and sustain that day in day out, and produce new ideas themselves, equally as complex, that will increase your organisation's profits and bring new business. You are willing to pay for that level of intellect and know where the "super nerds" reside. Universities like Oxbridge and Imperial and their international equivalents etc have already done the work of pre selecting the type of person they are looking for. They know that someone who can not only handle the workload and level of an Oxbridge computer science degree but is in the top 5% of their year would likely be the ideal candidate to interview.

Likewise, those graduates are willing to travel wherever is needed to secure that job, and will most likely have already impressed at a paid summer internship in their penultimate year and had a return job offer for after they've graduated.

It's very unlikely that someone at their local former polytechnic requiring BBC at A-level is going to be capable enough to work at the pace and level required.

They don’t offer a degree in interior design. Are you sure you don’t mean just design or graphic design? It’s not cushion plumping in any event.

This is honestly what I was told. These friends were all through a Buddhist meditation group. There was a strong culture of privilege denial humility in the group so it may have been a convenient mis-truth! Given that there was also meant to be a strong culture of honesty, I just never questioned it, and am pleased to have found out here and not through a mix up at work!

That’s amazing and I hope you find a job where you can use the skills you have acquired.

DH is a scientist and says the quality of graduates now is appalling. His says their basic knowledge is poor, some of them are coming out of RG unis and traditional departments.
We had a family member who recently did a science degree and only spent 3 hours a week doing lab work. DH said he was expected to do 15 minimum. She also had very little time in lectures. I’m guessing this has all been because of cuts.

Maybe they meant that their doctor title is honorary and not from a PhD. So they didn’t have a doctoral degree (they’d have an undergraduate one or two of them). But it would be so strange for them to say they didn’t have a degree full stop.

But nurses surely had good thinking skills and basic literacy even when they were able to become nurses without a degree.

It depends on the qualification and for the job. For the majority of jobs, they’re not worth the paper they’re written on.

I'm really surprised at the strength of feeling against post-1992 universities on here. Surely you should look at an exercise like the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) if you want to know where the good places to study are - based on metrics like teaching quality, resources, student support and graduate outcomes following the degrees.

You'll find a lot of post-92 universities far outperforming the Russell Group and Red Brick unis. Why would you assume better teaching quality and resources from a more selective uni? I can assure you that a 1st from a Russell Group university is of the same standard as a 1st from a post-92 university. The only difference is that a Russell Group intakes students with higher A-levels to begin with.

Since when was a degree education just about jobs you can get on completing the degree l!

Would you really want our nurses to be less educated? Why?!

Completely agree.

A transactional approach to higher education means people have forgotten the wider value of education.

Huh? Where did I say that?

It's a combination of snobbery and a lack of understanding.
Threads on university always go the same way.

A TA at my kid's primary school covered her class teacher's full maternity leave, with parents being told that she'd watched how it all works and could cover it. I just hope she got paid appropriately during that time!

Nursing has changed enormously in the last 30 years. When Project 2000 was underway (the expectation that all nurse training should be degree level) I was at a course evaluation where people were asking if they would still be able to apply bandages. Expectations of nurses were very low. Nursing was very undervalued and it was clear that the increasing complexities of medicine require far more of nurses.

Nursing is an increasingly technical profession requiring skills that nurses of the past wouldn't have had. Nursing had a far greater focus on personal care (washing, pillow plumping etc). It was a course that required 5 O levels. My mum said she had 8 weeks of academic training in her 3 years of work-based training.

I think the level of thinking, analysis and technical skill is far higher than it was.

DS's 6th form ex-girlfriend went to an average university (Leeds). She did Physics for a year but then switched degrees twice and instead took 5 years to complete uni.

She didn't even get a job in her degree field. She's now unemployed and just does "gaming streams" and has absolutely no ambition in life to do anything career wise apart from play games and be an "e-girl".

DS on the other hand did his BA & MPhil in economics from Cambridge and is now working a successful career in finance.

University shouldn't be for everyone.

@latetothefisting many tas have degrees and are sometimes more highly qualified than the teachers

I wouldn’t call Leeds average. It’s a Russell Group uni and very well respected. Getting in to do physics there is impressive. It sounds as if this girl has issues that have nothing to do with where she went to university. I know someone who got a first from Cambridge but his mental health issues prevent him from working and have done since he was in his mid 20s. He lives on his own and survives on benefits.