to think my degree is as good as anyone elses?

[SecretSlattern]

I started off in 2004 doing a NVQ 3 in Early Years Care and Education, 3 months after having DD. I qualified 9 months later, with 2 level 3 qualifications and worked for a bit in day nurseries, pre-schools and after school clubs before studying a Foundation Degree in Early Years Childcare and Education.

At the start of the second year of my FD, I discovered I was pg with DS but continued on anyway and had him 2 weeks before the end of the course. I graduated from Uni in 2008, six weeks after having DS.

I finally went back to finish the last year of my BA (hons) in Early Childhood Studies. I now have 2 DCs, one of which is constantly in and out of hospital, and have now discovered I am pg with DC3. The timing is pretty shit, but there you go. DC3 is due in May, the same month that I am due to finish my degree (although will still have to write my dissertation, which I have done before so am confident I can do it again).

However, when telling a friend of mine what I was up to (hadn't spoken in a while), she sniffed, pulled a face and basically said it wouldn't matter if I didn't finish my degree because it isn't a proper degree anyway. "What can you do with a degree in kids?" was the question I was asked.

I actually intend to go on in the future and do a PGCE in primary, specialising in early years. AIBU to think that just because my degree is "in kids" it doesn't make it any less of a degree? I still go to uni, still have to do a mahoosive amount of work, same as any other undergrad.

You wouldn't be shocked if you were a secondary teacher, chica. Your finger would very much be on the pulse as to what is the best for your students.

By status I am referring to kudos I guess,so an Oxbridge degree comes with kudos by default I think. Whereas validity- is about recognising that the rolethat person hs undertaken is worthwhile,deserving of respect,and requires significant achievement for that person.

Doing one's best and achieving is as valid whether we are talking about someone with an LD managing a GCSE or a person with an IQ of 155 getting theer Oxbridge place: we should celebrate indicidualachievement rather than only value it by the status theya chieve.

And yes sorry my posts aren'tmaking sense- climbing toddler coupled with my typing (VI- that's beyond my control) and having spent several hours studying differential diagnosis in ASD's on ATHENS today
.

I don't know why we only value the peoplewho achieve in narrow ways tbh, we need to wien our definitions of what we view as success. Andcertainly teh degree the OP is taking can lead to financial success, judhging by the 6 bedroom house my sister has now acquired LOL.

Degrees aren't all equal, nor are the universities that award them, but if the degree is recognised by employers in your chosen field of work then it is obviously the right one for you. Tell your "friend" to fuck off.

'I am also skeptical about needing a degree in order to help this sector.
'

Rremembering the prospectus for the closest Uni to offer ECS Uni they suggest Nursery Management as one option, along with teaching, but also areas such as service planning for LA's,and maanging specialist provision (IIRC the surestart manager I used to collaborate with had an ECS degree or similar, a role certainly requiring a graduate as it was at least on a par with the people she laised with daily- SW's,GP's, teachers,funding providers).

A lot ofcharities (my formerfield) only took grads as well, and preferred study in their area..... awful lot of kids charities around.

But that is just management - something open to 'any degree'.

Not really,if you'remanaging a SureStart facility (for example- I worked for an allied charity) you had to have a good knowledge of children's services, child development etc (it may not seem it but certainly was an aspect- knowing what placements to allocate, whether certain things were red flags, understanding of SN issues, CP knowledge etc)..... massively more specialised than the generic management positions Dh has held in the past.

I think that's especially true of any rolewhere you go intopoele's homes and famillies- when you'rethere you have to have the knowledge and skills yourself,not randomly refer to someone else on a list. That approach simply doesn't work,certainly not on the estates we used to cover. Peopleneeded to seeyou knew your stuff, not just how to spout the party line.

Plus,adegree is a transferable item:someone with this degree may well end up studying SEN,Child Psych,etc:teh value therein is theaward of Xpoints and base knowledge. A degreedoes not have to be an end in itself, it be a path to other things.

Those are in-service training requirements (given the rate this government brings in new initiatives), not something you need to do in a degree. It is not exactly hard to learn. It is something that all teachers are used to doing, with specialist teachers doing an extra course every year or so.

Secretslattern, well done and ignore your "friend".

I am very pleased that childcare workers are getting degrees in the subject, having had 3 children in nurseries and preschools I think it's great to have dedicated trained enthusiastic people looking after my children.

In terms of the value of degrees, I find it quite interesting that Physics graduates have one of the lowest rates of employment, and media studies graduates one of the highest (though when you hang out with Physics graduates you can sort of see why this happens ).

Though as a philosophy graduate I still think it's the best subject you can study, as well as being the most irrelevant and useless one....

AMS they could be maanged as in service training I guess, but with the smalle organisations I have worked for that hasn't been a viable option.
Why pay X of raised funds dfors oemthing when you can recruit peopletrained in it who comewith certifiable evidence of having reached that level?

But I suspect we will always differ wildly on this, such is life.

I agree that most peoplecouldn't manage a medical degree, I certainly couldn'teven though I am not stupid. But a degree to some seems tomean something different to others- it is ultimately a certification that you reached X number ofpoints in your chosen field, it is a currency.

I know I could ahve graduated from any Uni in my subject, but only new Uni could offer me the accessibility I needed. That's the case for many I think. Only 2 places offer the MA I am taking (Birmingham and my Uni_ yet it is of real importance and accessed by peopleranging from EYP'sto GP's. A wider range of Uni'sallows for awider range of degrees to be offered. now whether they need to be calleddegrees is debatabvle but nevertheless it is three years study and that requires access to the same finance and support system: and it is equipping peoplefor the same post grads, and actually allowing people toachieve their own ambitions. if there wasn't somuch snobbery then it might be OK to grade them differentially- but wouldn'tthat require setting up whole new systems of accreditation, persaude some institutions not to offer them, risk the avilability of fince both at University and post grad level?
A narrower choicerange also limits options: my Uni was the only one for a great disatnce tooffer a module in jainism for example, no real bother to me but my friend specialised in it.

I suppose if they could comeup with something to differentiate- what would you call it?A post HND cert in X?- that wopuld be OK except I think peoplewould be xcluded by it,whereas it is better IMO that we realise that a degree siomple refers to study at a levelhigher than HND for a minimum of one year full time. It should be a descriptive functional label, and have the rest knocked out of it, because snobbery is ugly.

LeQueen, it's not quite that simple though, is it?

There are types of intelligence, not all of which map neatly onto traditional academic subjects. If I'm doing my own subject (Eng. Lit), I come across as reasonably bright, but according to IQ testing I'm quite severely retarded in other areas of intelligence. You seem to be saying that a medic/engineer type of person will likely be able to manage any other type of degree, but that just isn't true. You'll find, for example, than a higher-than-usual proportion of engineers are dyslexic, and probably not the best people to write long essays. Degrees don't measure pure IQ, so why simplify the issue like this?

Higher than usual proportion of dyslexic engineers.

When I was doing my degree, the common knowledge was that engineers who were scientists who could both write and do math.

Writing is a key skill requirement for engineers. It is pretty difficult to succeed without good communication skills.

Enjoyed thread. laughed at mime and not bad word to say. ha ha.
certain unis have the best reputations. for example, my best friend went to birmigham for spanish. brum was best for languages. don't know if it still is. assume so.
reputation is important. in every area of life including uni and subject choice.

AMerryScot - yes, I guess there might be even more dyslexics who are straight scientists, I don't know. I only know the one about engineers because my uni disability rep happened to mention it. I'd still hazard a guess that the kind of reading/ writing you do for engineering is a wee bit different from reading several texts in foreign languages and writing 10,000 word dissertations on them, mind - try spellchecking something like that and see where it gets you!

I work a lot with doctors who are all in awe of my literary/communication skills, bless them. They are all v. v. clever, is always intellectually stimulating working with them - but they grant me respect for my professional expertise too. Some of them would never be able to make anyone other than colleagues in exactly the same branch of medicine/policy understand what on earth they are on about. (These are among the brightest of the bunch, docs who are on national bodies shaping medical policy - Royal Colleges etc. etc. etc.) I'm especially fond of/frustrated by the ones who write a list of bullet points and think I can fill in the rest of the chapter, as if I'm a ruddy expert on whatever it is! Have to tease the context out of them very very carefully.

Interesting that we have a public health masters on this thread - it used to be the case that only doctors could be consultants in public health but now there's a greater variety of backgrounds and I think it's all the better for that.

Btw, I think there are better places to study medicine than Oxford, tbh. It's fine if you want their approach to the subject, but Cambridge/Imperial are probably the best (am sure some docs will come on to tell me I've forgotten about X and Y). And St Georges does an excellent compressed degree for people who aren't the standard 18yos with 4 As in science subjects. The doctors they turn out are just as good as your typical sixth former, and I suspect actually better because they have wider experience.

And medicine is so specialised you are fucked if you realise half way through you don't actually want to be a doc.

(edam, iirc at Cambs if you are lucky you can leg it after 3 or 4 yrs with a BSC in Medical Sci...)

The OP's friend was very rude to say anything.

But... when is this conspiracy to conceal true unemployment figures and saddle young people with a lifetime of debt going to stop?

I met someone recently who was talking about "uni" (says it all). I asked her what degree she had done. And it was, I kid you not, Sports Massage Therapy. ?????? Three years of sports massage therapy? Wouldn't any football club etc worth its salt want someone with a physiotherapy qualification?

But, whatever private thoughts I had, I murmured "Very interesting..."

Back to OP: working with children is very commendable - I would rather work in a chicken plucking factory or clean public lavatories. When I had to do my stint at the community playschool every few weeks it filled me with dread and gave me a fearful migraine.

Oh, there are docs who can write, but I think they may be in a minority.

Used to work with engineers too and am interested in what people are saying about them being better writers than scientists. I had to work very hard at knocking the little beggars into shape. They often had very little grasp of grammar or wrote in an extremely formal pompous manner because they weren't as confident with writing as they were with calculations/specifications or bills of quantities. Maybe engineering degrees have come on apace since then, though? (I certainly couldn't have begun to even think about their jobs btw, mean no disrespect to them, would have no idea how to calculate whether a bridge would stay up even if they explained it to me!)

LeQueen - you're right, it's simplifying. But, to be honest, I don't think you have to write excellent English to get the GCSEs/A Levels needed for Engineering. You need to be literate and able to marshall your thoughts on paper, but I doubt anyone will mind if you don't write with dramatic flair or persuasiveness. Nor will you need to be attuned to the figurative nuances of language, or capable of unpicking etymologies.

In the same way, I bet there are things in OP's degree that your average doctor didn't need to develop as part of his or her skill set.

(Although having said that, one of the partners - a fully qualified civil and structural engineer - did a visual inspection of a car park and said it was fine just 24hours before it collapsed...)

All the doctors I know tend to be good at all the subjects they have ever taken.

Degrees are not all the same value, some are better then others, it depends on the university, course and grade you get.

Secret Santa your friend was very rude to you and good luck with the rest of your degree and your future career.