Shift towards STEM and vocational degrees

[ErrolTheDragon]

I thought some here might be interested in this report from yesterday's Times, and today's leader column with a very positive response to it.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/university-students-ditch-arts-degrees-and-opt-for-medicine-w63vnzrxd?shareToken=6e46a444cbf4ad46435a1154c599e20a

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-changing-trends-in-higher-education-two-cultures-bzzlfbjzd?shareToken=66db880492335958414064160e810114

My take on it is that it's probably to some extent an overdue rebalancing following a rise in arts subjects in former polys versus their original more technical/vocational focus. And there's more easily accessible data on employment prospects and salaries, which coupled with tuition fees doubtless informs students decisions.

I say this all the time, but there is little point trying to get people who have no talent for STEM to do STEM, when they will do much better on a languages or history degree. In any event we need those skills too. There would have been no point me doing A level sciences, I would have got EEE at best and ended up not going to university.

I would say though that I think we need a lot more people doing geography and similar degrees to help with combatting climate change.

Yes, obviously not everyone has the aptitude do a STEM subject, but I guess now youngsters are considering more vocational choices rather than vanilla arts and humanities disciplines.

Geography may be something of a bridge between the 'two cultures' ... some aspects of it are pretty STEM-ish.

We need scientists and engineers to help tackle climate change, not geographers, at least not geographers without a grasp of maths and physics to help them understand the climate models and predictions. I suppose they can help by writing essays about the impact though.

Human geography may be important for understanding the effects on population, mass migrations etc caused by climate change, perhaps, rather than actually combatting it. Though I'd have thought a good grasp of statistics would be necessary, at least.

@redsquirrelfan

I say this all the time, but there is little point trying to get people who have no talent for STEM to do STEM, when they will do much better on a languages or history degree. In any event we need those skills too. There would have been no point me doing A level sciences, I would have got EEE at best and ended up not going to university.

I would say though that I think we need a lot more people doing geography and similar degrees to help with combatting climate change.

There's every point in encouraging people who think they have no talent for STEM to stick with it until they get it. If they are well taught, or encouraged to find good online teaching tools (my DS likes BBC Bitesize, but there are many alternatives) their confidence will improve. Often children's confidence in STEM is undermined by poor teaching or by parents who were badly taught themselves and say things like 'I'm no good at that and you take after me'. It's a vicious circle.

Every Geography degree includes elements of statistics and physical Geography some higher level mathematical work. There are huge amounts of science in physical Geography and when you go into climatology and meteorology the links to the climate crisis are obvious. GIS tools allow for the mapping of complex problems, and we all use those. I agree with PP about human Geography too! But yes we also need engineers, physicists, chemists and biologists. Also many more linguists.

And yes I'm biased, I am a geographer. I get really fed up with people telling me Geography isn't as useful as history (in school or beyond).

Let's not forget applications for nursing have also increased.

We need to encourage applications for healthcare courses. But if we want to keep those people in this Country after qualifying then working in the NHS needs to be a lot more attractive!

@lovelemoncurd

Let's not forget applications for nursing have also increased.

Yes, exactly - the move is to vocational as well as STEM. Obviously there's quite an overlap and I'm not sure exactly what they include but maybe some others which have a practical element such as design.

Hopefully it is a general trend towards better careers education and parents/schools advising children to think about qualifications that will be attractive to employers rather than 'just do what you enjoy - employers won't care so long as you have a degree'. They do care!

Bucking the trend, has anyone else noticed greater numbers going into Sports Science? It seems to have become the new media studies. Soon we'll all be able to hire an over-qualified personal trainer for less than the cost of a cleaner.

There are probably more jobs where sport science is directly relevant and helpful than there are for media studies.
Whether all of the vocational options really need to be degrees is another question - tuition fees etc may perhaps result in some being reconfigured as diplomas etc.

An unwinding of Blair's well meant but ill-advised change to higher education, perhaps? He probably should have boosted the status of polys and FE colleges rather than the '50% go to uni' idea.

There are some fantastic-looking degree apprenticeships. My DS is tempted by one in particular. But there needs to be a culture shift to help them take off. His school (grammar) is promoting apprenticeships to a certain extent but doesn't yet list any on its public-facing "destinations" page (even though I know some leavers have gone down that route). The more prestigious universities need to start backing them. For the one DS was looking at we had to make specific enquiries to the company to find out which uni was the awarding body - they certainly weren't headlining it, even though something like 50% of an apprentice's time would be in lectures. I'm still confused by the answer because it turned out to be a uni in a completely different part of the country to where the apprenticeship is based.

Also, the required grades for degree apprenticeships tend to be relatively low, which doesn't help their respectibility. James Dyson has the right idea - his degree apprenticeship has very high required grades (DS likes the look of the salary, but manufacturing engineering isn't really his thing).

It does tend to go up and down, my father, uncle and mother did medicine, medicine and teaching. My grandfather's brother in the 1890s law and his sister 1892s nursing (I am not sure it was easy for girls to medicine then and she ended up running from a nursing point of view a ward in London for 20 years), My siblings and I all studied career specific degrees in the 1980s - mine was law. My lawyers daughters did not read law first but converted to law immediately after (did the GDP) nor did their twin younger siblings who are doing a law conversion course this academic year. I would certainly not have had a problem with any of my 5 reading law first as it saves the extra year of cost for student and parent.

Law however is unusual in that you don't need to read law for your first degree as long as you make up for that with the exams later (currently GDL and soon to be SQE1) and then whether you read law or not you then have yet more courses (LPC (soon to be SQE2 exams) for solicitors or bar course for barristers).

Well the Government agrees with no. No university funding to the universities for anything other than STEM from this September. No more London weighting either

I'm doing an Environmental Health Degree. Some of us are mature, the youngsters didn't all have good grades. Quite a few had to do a foundation year to see if they could cope. Anyway fast forward to almost the end and half of us have already secured jobs over 28k (not in SE this is a good start and it goes up and up). There are so many areas in STEM that people don't know about.
I pmd a mumsnetter the other day whose son had no idea what to do and wasn't going to get top grades. I suggested it was worth taking a look at the career options.
The response I got was quite shirty I felt because it didn't have anything to do with his A levels and she wanted him to go to an RG University (but remember he had no clue what HE wanted)
When I chose my degree I looked at unistats/what uni and looked at salary and successes of the previous cohort.
I'm tired of the snobbery around educational establishments. I was asked by an RG student why I had chosen my uni over superior RG one I said if it offered the course I wanted I might have considered it!

I think it's an inevitable consequence of university tuition fees. I could have done a STEM degree, I certainly had the aptitude for it. However, I had the luxury of being able to do a free degree, so I did what I found most interesting. DD loves both the arts and the sciences, but is mindful of the debt that she will accumulate at university and is therefore thinking about ROI as well as personal interest.

@Criagert

There are some fantastic-looking degree apprenticeships. My DS is tempted by one in particular. But there needs to be a culture shift to help them take off. His school (grammar) is promoting apprenticeships to a certain extent but doesn't yet list any on its public-facing "destinations" page (even though I know some leavers have gone down that route). The more prestigious universities need to start backing them. For the one DS was looking at we had to make specific enquiries to the company to find out which uni was the awarding body - they certainly weren't headlining it, even though something like 50% of an apprentice's time would be in lectures. I'm still confused by the answer because it turned out to be a uni in a completely different part of the country to where the apprenticeship is based.

I’m not sure which degree apprenticeship you’re referring to but sometimes the degree is ‘accredited’ by a university but the apprentice doesn’t actually ever attend that university. JP Morgan’s scheme is with Exeter university but based in either their London or Bournemouth offices. I think they use BPP as the course provider (could be someone else though) despite the degree being accredited by Exeter. Regarding grades required being low I think this is to appeal to a wider range of applicants. The assessment process for these higher apprenticeships is pretty rigorous with interviews, maths test, reasoning tests, situational analysis test, psychometric tests. Followed by assessment days that are around 5 hours online and maybe a final interview. They are very much looking for the right person for them. I think for the JP Morgan one in London there were around 5000 applicants this year for around 20/30 places. The Bournemouth one is still open I believe. But you couldn’t apply to both. The Big4 and other accounting firms offer similar schemes with similar application/selection processes. Our school doesn’t highlight them. It’s all about going to university. I think DD1 is the first at her school to get into one. There’s been a few raised eyebrows from my friends who seem to think I’m bigging up a YTS program.

Thanks @notdonna, that's exactly the sort of detail I'd want to know before applying, but isn't clear on the particular apprenticeship DS was looking at. I suppose it's the company itself which needs to get better at explaining the programme, rather than just giving promotional detail. However, they're a large well known company, so I don't suppose they will be under-subscribed.

www.ucas.com/events/discover-apprenticeships-exhibition-387746

This might be useful?

Better to do a math , computer science, medical degree and grad to 30k salary then doing history or arts degrees and grading to 18k salary working retail because there are no jobs for your degree (which you never bothered to research)

I thought one of the things lockdown had made quite clear was the value of the U.K. cultural sector. I think it’s very easy to say - Oooh humanities and languages are useless - but really if we end up with many more people with degrees in STEM than there are jobs then STEM employment opportunities will diminish 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t think it’s as straightforward as STEM = good.
www.gov.uk/government/news/uks-creative-industries-contributes-almost-13-million-to-the-uk-economy-every-hour

That’s encouraging callingon

@Jsnn

Better to do a math , computer science, medical degree and grad to 30k salary then doing history or arts degrees and grading to 18k salary working retail because there are no jobs for your degree (which you never bothered to research)

I'd agree if your prime motivation was earning a good salary as soon as you graduate. Although Xenia would argue to do History then a law conversion - best of both worlds

[quote callingon]I thought one of the things lockdown had made quite clear was the value of the U.K. cultural sector. I think it’s very easy to say - Oooh humanities and languages are useless - but really if we end up with many more people with degrees in STEM than there are jobs then STEM employment opportunities will diminish 🤷🏻‍♀️ I don’t think it’s as straightforward as STEM = good.
www.gov.uk/government/news/uks-creative-industries-contributes-almost-13-million-to-the-uk-economy-every-hour[/quote]
We're a very long way from a position where there are more STEM graduates than jobs. However there are many more arts graduates than there are jobs in the cultural sector. That is why my IT department is currently being managed (badly) by an arts grad who got a job on the IT support desk and never left.