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!

@Watdidusay Nobody sent me to university - it was a choice I made.
You sound horrendously patronising to be honest. Why do I need the “opportunity to advance”?
And maybe some have chosen retail for reasons that suit them.
Personally, it now fits with my life with a young family. Yes, I could go and work longer hours in what I’m guessing you would think of as a “proper job”, and pay out for more childcare and travel to allow me to do it. But I currently walk 20 mins to work after dropping my DC off, walk 20 mins back, get to spend more time with my family. Sometimes money and career aren’t everything

It’s not that we’re over educating people, more that the standards aren’t high enough. Plenty of people with degrees, and post-graduate degrees, are breathtakingly ignorant and inarticulate. I have known people with masters degrees who can barely string a sentence together. I also knew a man with a PhD, who lectured in psychology at a polytechnic. His ignorance about almost everything outside of his field astonished me. He had never heard of the poet John Milton, for example. Fair enough if you don’t want to read Paradise Lost, but he had never even heard of him!

I know someone with a biology degree from Oxford who works in a grocery shop. Applied for loads of grad jobs, got rejected. What do you suggest people do in that position? They aren’t “taking” jobs from your dc, they are doing the best they can in a broken country.

Actually I know a lot of grocery shop employees and they are mainly very capable people indeed.

We aren’t over educating, we have stifled job opportunities.

That's just what happens when the job market is tough. I finished my PhD in 2008 at the height of the crash. No one was hiring in science then, and those that were had many applicants who were highly experienced and qualified. I was out of work for 6 months before I found something. I do think experience absolutely trumps education after a certain point, so always encourage younger people to work or volunteer - almost anything, it's nice if it's relevant but honestly knowing you can be trusted to turn up on time and be nice to your colleagues goes a long way too!

You can never be overeducated.

you anger is misplaced.

What's even worse is when people with masters and PhDs can't even get a job in Lidl because they are overqualified and it is assumed that they will move on asap, but there also aren't the "correct" subject-specific jobs available......in that circumstance a postgrad actually makes it harder to find work, not easier.

oooh that's what my teen wants to do (actually illustration first and then animation!!)

Why? I don't know about Lidl but I do know premier inn, McDonald's and asda there's no need to be degree educated to get management jobs

Sounds like the OP is jealous of people that have worked hard to broaden their minds and skill sets.

I don’t get why you’re angry tbh. Someone older and more experienced in life got the job. What does their level of education have to do with it?

I kind of agree with the OP.

The problem is we give degrees to people who are, in any meaningful sense of the word, not graduate material.

The dumbing down of courses and grade inflation has made many degrees not worth the paper that they are written on.

Life experience, ‘adulting’ and friendships can all take place in the workplace.

I think this mass participation in university has lowered GDP and, at the same time, massively decreased social mobility as there aren’t the funds to support the truly academic who are poor but would really benefit from uni.

On the contrary, I think people are woefully UNDER educated. If they weren't, for example, the Brexit mess wouldn't have happened and Reform wouldn't get a single vote.

I’m not particularly saying that, thought.
OP mentioned degrees in terms of being useless and I just don’t think that’s true.

plenty of careers don’t require a degree. And there are lots of other courses.

I expect that they need the sort of experience that an 18 year old is unlikely to have, though?

I think a lot of people on this thread exist in a bubble of educated intelligent people.

The average national IQ is around 100. If you have ever met anyone with an IQ of around 100, you will realise that they will struggle with decent GCSE grades, let alone further study.

Only 32% of the country have an IQ above 115 which will not get you anywhere near a decent STEM degree.

Realistically, people should be appropriate educated, which would mean far fewer at uni and far more learning job skills.

Exactly this.

I don’t think there is any such thing as too much education.

That's a fair point. It's rare that I need to step outside my social bubble of graduate, professional friends and their grammar school, graduate children. It's so easy to assume the majority of the UK are very similar but it's actually very far from it. Depressingly so.

Haha no. Since education comes with so much debt id say there is an under education issue. People do decide not to get a degree due to cost.

I have gotten decent jobs with no degree, ahead of candidates with degrees and masters, due to extensive experience and ability to sell myself in interview, oh and good references.

He will find something eventually.

Spend a week working with the public, then say that with a straight face.

I think I agree with you though the intelligence rating makes me a bit uncomfortable because there are other sorts of intelligence like emotional intelligence which are just as important, if not more important than bald intelligence.
On your main point though, I agree. It was Labour who started the change in education, encouraging polytechnics to become universities, a well meaning change which it was thought would mean over 50% of school students would earn a degree.
However, a well educated workforce has to have jobs to match and there was much dismay in industry as apprenticeships disappeared and people began to speak of degrees being needed for every job including service level jobs like cleaning!!
In my life, I've heard people over and over again lauding Germany which has excellent technical education and, I think, pupils are directed into the educational attainment stream which will best suit them.
Of course, good old Britain with its class snobbery also produced a situation where most pupils, even intelligent ones, failed the 11+ and were then directed into what were thought of as sink schools, so grammar schools got faded out in preference for comprehensives which failed to do the job of educating all according to ability.
In Oxford, it's common for people with PhDs to work as library assistants or academic support and admin roles because the city is crowded out with elite graduates, it's a city which mirrors the national situation.

The Conservatives engineered the change from polytechnics to universities.

They can, you’re right. But I assume highly educated people can string a sentence together or construct basic sentences. They would know the difference between there, their, they’re. Or are / our. Or two, to, too. I have just had to post something on a local Facebook page and the responses are just unbelievable from adults that barely make sense. No one can spell, everyone swears, some people are so thick they have missed the point entirely.

I don’t think the UK has a problem with too many highly educated people. It has a problem with tens of millions being completely sub standard when it comes to a basic level of knowledge required to live and work and interact with other humans.

Clearly not overeducated. There are a lot of problems, overeducation isn't one of them!

Lidl are an excellent employer. They run a really sought after graduate programme where I live, a very well paid one, which in itself is unusual. It also offers further in house development education along with travel opportunities. If you can get in the door, on any level, they are VERY tough to get into even as a shop manager, then you could have a very well paid career for a long time.
In the degree my dd did, ldl graduate programme was up there with the big 4 for prestige programmes.
If your friend has that much of a degree, expect to see her as a much higher up area manager with in the year.

Whilst I agree but didn’t want to phrase it that way - you can’t discount people like my highly educated great uncle(89 ) who isa telegraph reading utter snob and a total miser too - lives in a hovel - he hasa bee in his bonnet about anyone non British , unless they are rich and is all for stuffing his money away outside of any EU reforms - and posh snakeoilsakesnen like Farage are right up his street, as he does like a bit of cap doffing — sadly there are a fair old few of his ilk , not undereducated on paper and they would vote Brexit and Reform