2:2 now not a 'good enough' degree?

[Cortina]

I saw a thread, earlier today, I think on AIBU. Someone was cruising for a 2:2 at Uni. They said that this wasn't enough to secure employment and many were agreeing.

In my day, insert old git icon , a 2:2, especially from a well regarded university, was a perfectly respectable degree.

Have things really changed so much?

without - your comment that people with firsts are swots and unemployable is, quite frankly, moronic. I got a first, and a great job after graduating, as did all the other people who graduated with firsts. The people with low level 2:1s and 2:2s did not.

Posy I teach 16 year olds. I do teach history though and the sylalbus now is EXACTLY the same as it was when I did my GCSEs in 1990. No dumbing down in history

I am offended that a 2:2 is a drinkers degree. well yes, i did drink alot. actually. but i worked jolly jolly hard to get mine. mind you i was totally gutted to get a 2:2, as was my head lecturer, who thought i was on for a 2:1 no one got a first on ours. few got 2:1's. nearly all got 2:2's. I was accepted easily to a prestigious uni to do my MA, and got onto an accountancy programme easily (although not top 5).
so hasn't done me any harm.
but i appreciate that it wouldn't be good enough now-a-days.

oh and my dh has a few crap o'levels. but is the most quick witted, can-sell-sand-to-the-arabs, best manager/md i know. ceo's and top execs, royalty and popstars love him, as does the cleaner and the tea lady.
he earns good money. my BA and MA are useless. i earn less than him. so just goes to show.

why would you want your child to go to uni, these days. unless they are going ot train to be a barrister ?
mine was one of the last few years for no fees no cost , no nothing. i left owing nothing, mind you i had part time jobs all the way through.
unless its incredibly academic thing my ds's want to do, i shall encourage them to do something that makes them happy.
isn't there are shortage of electricians/tilers and etc in london . weren't they trying to get youngsters onto their training schemes. and offering them minimum 40k jobs. sounds good to me as a starting position.
my bil is a bricky. self employed. now has 7 buy to let houses. his own house mortgage paid. is a millionaire.
if it makes my sons happy, why uni ? that sounds like a much better route.

Of course it matters where you got the degree! One from Imperial College will always be worth more than one from Thames Valley.
For those that say get an apprenticeship instead it isn't so easy-there are thousands of applications for very few places. It seems a much more sensible way to go-if there were the places.

therein lies the problem

'where' you studied should matter - HUGELY

when they were polys and universities the hierarchy was evident

nowadays people are applying for jobs that they are hugely underqualified for but just because they have a degree from the back of beyond previously known as college a university - they think they are the elite

Actually I think that polys and universities always had very different functions. However, polys always offered degrees, but these were externally verified by the CNAA pre-1992. A poly degree was usually vocationally lead (teacher training for example), whereas Universities were about the ivory tower. I think it was a big mistake to make polys into universities, not because it eroded some heirarchy, but because it diluted the sense of what a poly was there for, which was quite a different function to that of a university.

I agree that they had a different function-I don't know why it had to be changed. I think that it is fairly easy to work out the hierarchy-self evident when you try to get a place.

clement 'no dumbing down in history'

well i disagree

when i did history it was not cut down into repeatable 40 minute modules - with coursework to boot

sorry but it's a doddle compared to 1984

unseen very informative thankyou

I think that the egalitarian way of thinking made it inevitable that polytechnics would become universities. The egalitarians want to create a world in which everything is equal, which is why obvious success stories like grammar schools have to be discouraged.

However, I think that a more important reason for polytechnics becoming universities was in fact business. Allowing polytechnics to be on a par with universities would attract more fee-paying students. Of particular importance was money from abroad, with foreign students willing to pay to gain the cachet of a British university education. The egalitarians played a role, but as ever it was filthy lucre that really led to dumbing down.

I got a 2ii in english lit and I certainly wasn't lazy, I have struggled academically all through school and I really struggled with my degree course, but I kept going and was very proud to have what i did. It's never helped me get a good job, i've never eally tried as I had kids straight out of uni,

I think institutions and departments vary massively in handing out 2:1s and 1sts. On my course there were no 1sts for 7 years and a handful of 2:1s every year. On my ex partner's course virtually everyone got a 2:1 and they gave out 4 or 5 firsts every year. I graduated in the last recession (1991) and it took me about 7 years to get a decent graduate job with a 2:2 (I worked really hard to get this). I think maybe more emphasis should be given on acquiring trades / business skills at school. There certainly aren't enough graduate jobs for all the people coming through.

Post, you asked about 16 year olds, I told you about GCSEs.
As for A levels, I regurgitated two years worth of material but had a choice of 14 essays (had to chose 4) so even in the "good old days" we learnt strategically.
Personally I hate all this nonsense about dumbing down. I got a first, a masters and a PhD in my subject and don't consider myself as a member of any "elite". The fact that younger people may or may not have an easier time attaining a first today has no bearing on the value of my qualifications, because they have no actual value beyond the fact that I am happy that I worked hard to get mine. The only one that has been any "use" has been my PGCE but I firmly believe in the benefit of education for educations sake.

don't you accept they are easier today?

eeek, i got a 2:2, bit sad to find out it's not good enough! my degree is in textile design, graduated in 1992, and in that time, i've not once been asked what my degree result was, and i still design now, so am still within the related field.

for those who say getting a 2:1 or a first is easier now, i'm not so sure, within the arts at least. dh also has a 2:2 in illustration (also 1992), and now lectures in the same subject at uni. i've seen some of the briefs his students have to tackle, and it's way more in depth than anything we had to do 20 years ago.

Blimey. This is very worrying. I am 41 with 3 kids and start at Queen Mary, University of London in September to study Politics. I have just completed an Access course in Humanities and every essay was a distinction. I had no other qualifications because even though I was bright at school I had other family things going on and didnt go a lot of the time.

I did the Access to Midwifery last year but our course leader didnt apply to UCAS in time and none of us got a place, but my law tutor said I would be better off studying law or politics as there is no money for midwives and more opportunities with a politics degree.

I am wondering if I have done the right thing....

I've been teaching in universities for 16 years now, and I think the reason students are getting more higher class degrees is because:

1. There is more acommodation made for students with SEN and women students, so more coaching in study skills, social and emotional support and so on. Before 2000, if it wasn't a rugby injury or leukaemia, I think a lot of universities had problems understanding it.

1. The teaching is more consistent and sometimes published online, so people are more careful in their preparation. Before the internet, only the OU published their teaching materials (which is why they were so good).

1. There are a lot more resources in libraries and online to support learning, which means students work out how to get a good degree more easily. There are even books on how to do it.

Other than that, not a huge amount seems to have changed IMO.

MoreSpam, if you have a distinction in an Access course this will be seen as top drawer by Admissions Officers.

Other people have asked about variation amongst institutions. I think UK universities are 'banded' into four groups: Oxbridge, red brick or 'civic' universities, 'plate glass' (aka 1960s) and former polys. Sadly we are lacking the equivalent of the French Grands Ecoles and so on, as well as German or Swedish Technical Universities.

The older the university, the more prestigious the degree. However some of the courses in plate glass universities are rated more highly by employers than similar ones in red brick universities, and the entrance requirements are higher, so it's not a fixed thing.

On the course I lead, for example, we have 5 applications for every place, whereas in the elite university I taught in before, we had two applications for every place on a similar course. At my current university, we have more of a range of students than they do; our bottom group of students needs a lot more teaching, but our top group is pretty much the same as theirs. The degree classifications in both universities reflect this, and we benchmark against each other.

But there is an impact - if employers know in my day 15% of people went o univesrity and only a third of them got 2/1 and above from universities that means I was one of 5%.If now 50% go to university and two thirds get 2/1 or higher that means
1982 5% had a degree which was 2/1 or higher
2010 33% have

So in 1982 unoless you were the very best of employers you were silly to recruit just from 2/1s as not enough people and in 2010 you'd be silly to look much beoynd a 2/1 as you have a wide enough pool without and in 2010 when many graduates cannot even get bar work never mind real jobs employers can limit things even more. It's just market forces and supply and demand.

The main thing is that children are given the information they need to make the right choices.

As for the person above doing politics not midwifery yes a politics degree is better regarded although it's not as career specific as the other degree choice suggested to you and if you have a particular job in mind thereafter may well lead to more money than working as mid wife.

i am in my 5th year of an open uni degree and will graduate the end of next year. That will be 6 years of studying

i need to get at least a 2:1 to get onto the masters course i want to do. i am actually crapping myself that i wont get it and all myhard work will be completely wasted

I live in Scotland and was in the fourth year of my degree when my husband left. I moved in with my parents to allow me to complete my degree course - sadly within weeks of this both my parents were diagnosed with terminal illnesses.

At this point in my final year I had never failed a module and my grades were a mixture of some As, mostly Bs and the occasional C.

I had to nurse both parents and support my DS whose world had been turned upside down - so I approached my tutors and decided to withdraw from the course. (Thinking that perhaps I could return in a number of years when things had settled down). The university were more than accommodating and suggested extensions, deferments and financial assistance but it quickly became evident that there was no way I could do everything that was required of me. My family had to come first.

The university explained that if I had 'withdrawn' on my record it might be harder to re-apply for another course and that employers might not look so kindly on it - so I decided to graduate that year with a simple BA(no honours which lifted the burden of still being matriculated and having the classification of student. Otherwise I would not have qualified for state benefits when looking after my parents and son.

My mum died before I graduated and my dad requires full time care which I have provided since graduating. We are now moving towards the time when my dad will need more formal care from outside agencies. In preparation of this I have applied for a number of part-time posts but have not been successful.

Graduate type employment I find myself underqualified for whilst admin type jobs I am overqualified. In fact I had an interview recently for an office job and the interviewer told me that she would be concerned about employing me because I would probably leave within a short space of time. I explained that I just wanted a 'job' that fitted round dad and DS rather than a career - she then replied that she would have to think twice about my caring commitments interfering with ability to do the job.

Talk about stuck between a rock and a hardplace!!