To think people are overeducated in the UK?

[Watdidusay]

I am raging about this too be honest and I'm not sure why.

One of the mums at the school apparently lost her corporate job 8 months ago. Found this out today when I ran into her in Lidl in the next town - she was working as a manager there.
We ended up talking later in the day and turns out four of the staff there have masters degrees or above (one has a PhD). Apparently this is a common thing people are doing now as they cant get jobs in their fields
AIBU to think we are completely over educating people in this country now?

Feeling angry I think as DS (18) tried so hard over the summer to get a job like this but am finding out now they are all being taken up by people with lots of degrees!

Going to Uni has become 'the norm' now almost the same as going on your first trip to Ibiza with your pals. Of course we need people with degrees for certain roles but when I see youngsters starting at my firm (bog standard employer nowt special) with degrees in Media Studies for example, I do think what was the point. But they had a great time just a pity they have debt (not that they'll end up paying it back). We need to be encouraging people to learn trades instead of telling them all they should go to Uni.

What is the PhD in? Similarly, a masters in, say, sociology is worth a lot less than 2 year's of plumbing experience. etc.

Not everyone can learn trades!

Not everyone is suited to trades though. I can guarantee I’d have been shit at being a plumber/electrician etc!

I do think however a really big issue was companies using ‘degree’ as the filter to get in at all, when an awful lot of jobs don’t really need it

I followed much the same path as you did, @Crikeyalmighty - similar age too - and defninitely agree with this

I can sort of see why they did it, in that it was once an easy way to sift out complete no-hopers, but even that no longer works now numerous degrees have become devalued and some leading employers disregard those from the lowest ranking Unis

IMO it also doesn't help that fees mean too many feel they're "buying a degree" rather than the tuition which hopefully leads to one. Add grade inflation driven by the desire to attract even more fees and you've got a perfect storm

The thing about having a high level of education is that you (are supposed to) have more choices. That's why people do more qualifications.

You can choose to work in Lidl if you want to even with a PhD. Its not reserved for the people who aren't qualified to do anything else.

There are less choices with less qualifications.

I don't think someone with a PhD is more qualified to be a mechanic than a qualified mechanic. Which is why skills and skills based training are also valuable.

What's not valuable is having no skills or qualifications, and expecting to still have preferred access to parts of the job market. As soon as there's a job shortage you have huge competition.

Part of society wants people to be knowledagable, yet society also needs workers , but it seems some think the more educated you are the more youll want to do better rather than a steady role etc

Jobs taken up by people you don’t think deserve them such as mothers who need to provide for their children?! How does your 18 year old deserve it more?

Tbf I don’t necessarily think having a degree will improve your chances of an unskilled job. There is a thing as being over qualified. If I was hiring for a supermarket job I’d probably be after a good communicator, good social skills, makes eye contact etc. I would possibly want someone who’d be reliable and willing to work unsociable hours and definitely not somebody who I’m likely to have to replace in 6 months. If someone had a degree I’d be worried they’d be off at the first opportunity. When I was young I worked in a supermarket and so did many students. Back then they were crying out for people to work weekends because the full time staff weren’t contracted to do so. Now most retail employees are expected to work if not part of every weekend definitely every other weekend.

As someone who grew up in another country, and who now has children in the UK education system.. no. We absolutely do not over educate people. If anything, quite the opposite.

So you get these middle class kids of lawyers and bankers who fund them to do their Ivory Tower phd in pointless subjects like the social implications of the architecture of a long demolished prison. They get their PhD and think they are going to be the next Professor Yaffle-Plum of Oxford University - but they can't get a job, mummy and daddy assumed they would get a job so stop funding them and reality bites so they go off to train to be a solicitor or a shop steward or something boring and conventional that actually pays an income - having wasted a lot of time and othere people's money doing a PhD that is valueless both to themselves and the wider pool of human knowledge.

Unnecessarily condescending. I know the phd subject has been chosen to express how esoterically pointless it is, but it doesn’t sound pointless to me in terms of an original academic contribution, going on to being a solicitor or intellectual development. I went down the law conversion route (not after an PhD, mind) and the skills I had learned studying humanities earlier have been very transferable.

And if you really want a chance at being the next ‘Professor Yaffle-Plum’ (haw haw) - and somebody is going to be - you presumably do need to do the PhD.

Yes, there is an oversupply of specialist academic qualifications to related careers and people need to make decisions taking into account the difficult economy as well as their personal interests, but we can talk about all that without mocking achievements and aspirations.

I don’t think over education is the whole problem.
When I was 18 (2009) all my friends still in education had shop jobs. These were either in big supermarkets or in shopping malls. At that time people didn’t really trust online shopping and self checkouts weren’t a thing. Obviously this has completely changed and as a result there isn’t the same volume of jobs in retail anymore.
At the same time my generation felt pushed to pursue higher education (I have a history degree I’m still paying for but have never really used).
We can now throw AI and other tech advances into the mix which is reducing entry level jobs across all sectors.

In my opinion, your son not easily getting a shop job is a result of over a decade of people buying from Amazon, returning countless online orders, using self checkouts and relying on Chat GPT. Demand for humans is down so there will be over qualified people filling these roles.

How did you move into gardening, @Fibrous? Agree entirely that a PhD isn't a life sentence.

"I am not criticising the mother for taking that job. I think good for her and it seems to be working for her for the time being (she was a regional director in a multinational company)."

And Lidl also have regional directors and are a multinational company.
She could easily be on a managerial training path.
Part of their grad programme is working the tills, working the stock, managing the floor. They make sure who is at the top, knows what its like on the floor.
You are seriously judging her here and you have no clue what her plan/job is, simply that she was on the shop floor.

AIBU to think we are completely over educating people in this country now?

No. Education is a good thing. You might not value it but there is a lot of evidence that shows the benefits of having an educated population.

Feeling angry I think as DS (18) tried so hard over the summer to get a job like this but am finding out now they are all being taken up by people with lots of degrees!

All of the jobs? C'mon you know that's not true.

I don’t have the aptitude or the interest. I’d be miserable working as a plumber or gas fitter.

I also wonder how great life is going to be for tradespeople when the trades are deluged by new entrants. They aren’t going to be able to command the rates they do now with many more of them to go around.

So, I look forward to the smug MN thread a few years from now when young people who have worked hard to qualify in a trade are mocked for thinking it would get them a decent standard of living when of course we all know plumbers are ten a penny.

You sound like so many of my friends! Their teenage kids can't get the kind of jobs we took for granted, which is a shame as it helps your development (probably the first time you mingle with people older than you, learning skills which are useful in later life, the pride of being able to pay for your own stuff etc).
It is ridiculous that we now expect so many kids to get deep in debt and then have no job when they've done everything we told them to. Not everyone should need a degree.
And then you get the people who say anyone without a job is just lazy.

So you think somebody with a lot of qualifications should turn down a job offer when they need to earn so that your daughter can get a job. Do you think she should be in this management position? As the mum you refer to has found out, adult life is brutal. Your precious kid needs to learn this as well.

"Are people in the UK overeducated?"

<reads AIBU>

"Nope"

Intelligence, education and wisdom and three completely different things - add in a fourth being common sense.

Having a degree doesn't automatically give you all four attributes!

Lots of people with degrees can be remarkably "thick" in normal day to day living, despite being remarkably "educated" in their chosen field.

Not everyone should need a degree.

Nobody is saying they should.

Slowly. I started with an evening class in Horticulture (level 2 RHS) at a local adult education college and then went on to do a semi remote diploma at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. The level 2 RHS is enough to be a qualified gardener. It was really fun but if you do it, I recommend doing it in person, as it's very detailed and you will lose the will to live if you don't have cohort support, I reckon. I found adult learning a lot harder because my eyes were tired, I was tired, and I had a lot more life going on than when I was in uni, where all I had to do was finely balance my partying and studying.

Yes it’s a problem. As a country the uk is low productivity compared to where we need to be to sustain our quality of life, not enough people are in high tech jobs creating exportable value. But for individuals with all the right qualifications… no jobs to be found. So it’s an investment problem. We’re over educated compared to the available funded jobs but under educated compared to what the demand for skills should be. Those who have the money are not investing in what would help the country long term and refusing to invest in training (even if you’re fabulously qualified, you’ll need some training if you’ve not worked in that industry or exact job before. What we’re seeing at the moment is a collapse specifically of new grad jobs and every position requires 3-5 years perfectly relevant experience as a minimum).

One problem is that traditionally lower income countries have massively grown in tech capability and out compete us, so it’s harder to sustain export producing jobs. Another problem is Brexit messing up our easiest export route. And a precipitous jump in inequality means a lot of money has been effectively removed from the real economy a) suppressing the local demand that might help to smooth things over and at least keep the internal economy moving b) lowering tax revenue so the govt has less available to invest and c) centering investment decisions in too few hands. Add in a government for the last decade that has systematically under invested and destroyed government budgets so that investment now is very difficult and we’re shouldering an increased debt burden… yeah it’s not an easy situation to get out of and we’re all collateral damage.

speaking as someone very highly educated (and with real work experience, I might add, and always high performing) in a supposedly high demand stem field, the jobs simply aren’t there. So yes I’ll be looking at things I’m ridiculously over educated for which pay far less than I was expecting to be worth. It’s shit. It’s not solved by slashing benefits and punishing people, nor by telling every young person to become a plumber. As a country we need to export, it is not generally feasible to export trades.

The thing is there are not enough proper jobs (most of the stuff on Indeed seems to be vague, incomprehensible job titles/descriptions or care workers) which have to be available from school leavers right up to people who are nudging 70.

I think it's obvious that the OP meant an entry level job, not a management job. She said her DD "couldn't get a job there." Given that she's 18, well, common sense suggests.....