Which Degrees are pretty 'pointless'?

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Just starting to look at courses with DS. So many choices. BUT I am sure there are some which are not particularly going to lead to much. Employers - what do you look for on a CV and what would you avoid?
And any other 'views' are welcome.
DS not even sure if he wants to go to UNI so we are having a good look into stuff.

MackerelOfFact universities do not award classifications to a % of candidates. Classification is dependent upon reaching a particular standard.

Mackerel, I would be very canny on what Uni you advise your DD to go for. On the whole, what you did can be a dangerous way to go, especially today with such an oversupply of graduates.

As a graduate she will need a brand. She either gets it from having gone to a fairly short list of highly trusted Unis, or she gets it from a specific course well regarded in the specific industry.

I'm sorry to say that 2:1s are not seen as equal across the board; there are some quite troubling statistics out there about levels of 2:1s awarded and grade inflation in some Unis. There is no way that degrees are standardised, I'm afraid. In fact, its the opposite- the sector is supposed to be as varied as possible, and offer all kinds of degrees from highly academic to very practical. There is thing called "parity of esteem" which means that we are not meant to express a view about which kind of education is intrinsically "better" - but standardised? definitely not.

Employers will buy a respected vocationally focussed course with a good reputation and good employer links. But a traditional non-vocational subject from the same Uni? that could offer the worst of both worlds, to be honest.

For your DD- making a quirky choice and hoping that employers will deduce from her A levels that she could have made a safer, more traditionally prestigious choice- there are two downsides to that. The main one is, she will get the teaching she gets where she actually goes; if she doesnt actually go to the safer RG Uni, she wont get the education they deliver, and her degree result wont be done according to their rules. Thats what employers are buying into- what happens post A level. The other is, employers are too busy.

MoutardeDeDijon this is what I originally thought. So why does the university make a difference?

Agree its the uni not the degree. DP did Ancient History at Exetet. He walked straight into a position with one of the top 4 accountancy firms and will leave there in 2 years time as fully qualified and with a starting salary elsewhere of £40,000. The interview process was long and he was only asked about the uni with one brief question about the degree subject itself.

beastofburden I agree that there are huge differences in the way that different institutions are viewed, and that it would be silly not to take that into account when choosing a university, but it is not true to say that there is no standardization. All degree programmes will be moderated by external examiners who i) work in a different institution in the same or a related field, and ii) have extensive teaching experience and are familiar with a range of institutions.

I often think that parents can really help, by mainly looking at what the child is like. Rather than trying to figure out what 'career' they need.
I met a engineer, who was now doing a sips qualification, last week.
People often don't stay in the same job or industry, or career. So for our children, surely that will just get worse?

Not all children are gregarious and love the challenge and the fight, to make to ceo, or alan sugar's team.
Many people are bright, but not that bright. plodders, who just want a nice job.
Not all people are actually very good managers.
How driven are you? Do you actually perform under stress. Or would you be better doing something more techy, where your personel skills were not tested all the time.

I know that I am going to have to guide ds1 ( who is only at primary) and help him , by assisting him, because he is going to find this bit very hard.
As many of us do.

mackeral- because its the University that decides what the standard is. The regulator does some quality assurance, but at no point do they even try to make sure that a 2:1 from Southampton Solent and a 2:1 from Oxford are at the same standard.

yes, but externals are there to make sure that the Uni applies its own rules, not to make sure that the degree follows the rules from their home Uni.

Mackerel the difference in perception is partly due to snobbery, but that is not the whole picture.
I used to teach in a very good department in an RG university. I now work in a fairly good department in a mid-table uni. The students we get are not as bright as the ones I used to teach. Most of the difference, however, is due to their expectations of themselves and their motivation. The best students I have now are as good as the best at the old place.
It is a complex situation, but students at good unis tend to expect to achieve and tend to be quite confident in their ability. This makes a huge difference.

beast part of the job of the external is to make sure that rules are followed, but they are also there to ensure standards. I am an external examiner, and I am asked to comment on whether standards are consistent with other HEIs I know, just as the external at my department do.

I have a first degree in European Studies and Modern Languages (pointless) and a Masters in Business Administration which I see as almost vocational because I think the topics covered would be related to pretty much any job you could do to some degree - such a wide breadth of subject matter, from psychology to finance, and I think it's genuinely useful to any career.

A friends DS got a 1.2 from non RG but 1994 university. He applied to a City firm for a job, spent hours on the online application. Got a phone interview which went on for half an hour until he was suddenly asked which university he went to. He told them and the interviewer said

"sorry we are going to have to terminate the interview now"

Within a few months that university moved to the RG.

Another friends DD has a first in business studies. She again got to the phone interview stage when suddenly asked what her A level results were. She told them A B C, they then terminated the interview as they said they only took ABB, her degree seemed less important than her . Their loss, she got another job and after a year or so she has been headhunted for a major advertising account.
But you do wonder what some HR departments are up to and why they are wasting applicants time. Those online applications take hours to fill in.

Moutard, I know- but that system doesnt go so far as to standardise Southampton Solent to Cambridge, does it? not really?

beast, no I suppose it is fair to say that I would expect someone with a 2(ii) from Cambridge to be more able than someone with a 2(ii) from Southampton Solent. I would also worry that the person with a 2(ii) from Cambridge was a bit of a waster, to have managed to do worse than almost all of their peers despite their proven ability.
As I mentioned upthread, I used to teach at an RG, I now teach a mid ranking pre-92. I am external for a bottom of the table ex-poly. Broadly speaking, the quality of work required for a first is not much different in the three places. The type of student that attends each is very different.

Moutard, interesting. And I agree about 2:2s from Cambridge!

I was interested to see that report recently on workloads. Oxbridge was around double the hours of other places, but outside that sector, there were some very interesting and unexpected places where very little work or contact time seemed to be on offer. Anecdotally I have firends whose kids have been disappointed with the contact time they have got at some big name places. Theres a fair bit of resting on laurels going on out there.

I think the amount of yer actual work is a big factor and one that people often dont know enough about when they are making their choice.

My uni is a 1994 group uni ( Moutard about that interview) and for my subject there are only 8 hours of contact time a week. However, students are expected to put in 30+ hours of additional time every week in order to learn their subject.

IMO contact hours is a bit of a red herring and depends largely on the subject being studied. Is it more valuable for a student to be spoon-fed information for 40 hours a week, then regurgitate the information at exam time. Or is it better that they are guided by their lecturers and tutors and spend time on their own reading?

yes, agree- the report wasnt only about contact hours. It also looked at how many hours were (a) expected and (b) done independently. And as you say, many 1994 Unis were requiring and getting more work from students than some RG Unis.

In my day (before the Russell group had been invented) when 5% of the population went to Uni

really bright people got 1st class degrees : about 1 in 10 of the class
bright hardworking people got 2:1 degrees : about 1/3 of the class
a 2:2 was a drinking man's degree : about half of the class
a 3rd was a smoking man's degree : about 1 in 10
and the remainder got a non honours degree

I have friends who work at Solent (or the Institute as was) - they are lovely but admit that it needs to shrink A LOT

lol- agree, in my year it was 8% firsts in my subject. Not any more....

Years ago I visited a friend at a poly who was doing the same course as me at a (RG - term didn't exist at the time) university. I went to one of her lectures. I shall just say that the depth and complexity of hers compared to my lectures was... different.

I can't honestly believe Mackerel thinks that an English degree from Cambridge is no better than one from... Southampton Solent and that an applicant would say to themselves, "Hmm, I like that module at SS so much I'll go there instead of Bristol." Duh!

[Can you imagine the outrage of the PR dept or whatever they have at Southampton Solent if they become aware of this thread?!]

Actually I've just perused the Southampton Solent prospectus. What a lot of fun courses! I think I'll do 3 years full time Popular Music Performance. I wonder if there's an age restriction...

Externals say things like 'yes, agreed, this definitely reads like a 2:ii to me', so there is some effort to make sure a 2:ii from one place wouldn't be a fail in another.

But still....

(Is Southampton Solent the new short-hand for the worst university you could choose? I thought from sixth form open evenings that Thames Valley had replaced de Montfort as the institution to be uttered only through curled lips....)

lainie I'm FB friends with one of them .... she'd laugh

(ps, let us not confuse timetabled contact hours with the amount of work that is expected either of the student or the staff!)

My dd has 1st class honours from a RG uni. On graduation, after some general work experience, she applied for admin jobs at universities. She applied to 4 RGs and 4 ex-polys. She was interviewed by all the RGs and none of the ex-polys. She now works in an RG uni. You might say - what worth 1st class honours from a RG university? (I did, as it happens)
Anyway - I popped by to say that I am very suspicious of degrees with the word 'studies' in the title. This often means that the university realises that a particular sector is popular with students, and will attract high applications. But they haven't actually got any partnership with the employing sector and the degree doesn't really get you any closer to working in the sector that doing something totally unrelated.