Does HE in 2024 really offer social mobility?

[mids2019]

Is the idea that increasing the number of students would increase social mobility a fallcy? It seems to my mind young people now are presented with a plethora of HE/FE choices with an underlying implicit message that university choice does not matter and all professions/roles will be equally achievable despite university attended or the underlying school grades.

I surmise that allowing ex polys to offer a range of degrees was to put often working class children in par with possibly middle class candidates with on average slightly better grades (due to social environment/schooling) when it comes to job applications. However in reality do employers really believe 'all degrees are equal' and are willing to take on applicants with lower education profiles to aid the general notion of social mobility or are they in reality simply just going to the same old universities (in one sense the older the better)

I thought this a good topic as I think my children are being offered little incentive to improve their potential GCSE marks through increased study as they are coming out with the argument 'well you don't have to have great GCSEs or A levels as you will still get into a uni and get a degree and that's all employers want'. To be frank depressingly this seems a reasonable argument......

Social mobility depends far more on the subject than the university. Degrees in healthcare, engineering, education, etc. do lead to careers and some social mobility for students.

Many degrees lead nowhere and this includes many subjects in Russell Group universities. Even a degree in History from Durham will do little or nothing for social mobility. While it is a perfect degree for those who already have connections and access to unpaid or low-paid internships, it is of increasingly little use to those students who don't have the social capital or money to access these.

⬆️Agree with this.

This is what dc1 has found after graduating from a non vocational degree at a RG.
It did increase her confidence, work ethic and ambition but without connections it’s difficult.

This doesn’t make much sense.

What will be replaced by robots? What do you think engineers actually do?

It can, and even with institute blind hiring, grades do matter because the more employable subjects require good grades even at 3rd tier universities.

University opens doors but only hard work gets you through. It's the soft skills and expanding you horizons than can't be underestimated too

@Uni2024

What do you think engineers do? I can promise you it's not manufacturing for most, we have 4 in our family and they range from critical infrastructure, defence, robotics (aero) and petrochemicals... definitely not robots in factories)

I think to a large extent it IS a fallacy to say HE leads to greater social mobility. It’s one factor among many and not an overriding factor. As pp have pointed out, having a qualification doesn’t mean you get a job. The wealthy will still help their kids to get into jobs using their contacts and money, while kids who don’t have those benefits end up not getting a decent job that uses their qualification. So they’re actually worse off, because they’ve wasted time and money but can’t get a job commensurate with that. Thats before you consider all the other factors such as music lessons and expensive hobbies that pad the CVs of the wealthy and make employers prefer them to a poor person with a similar qualification.

Yes there will be a few kids from poor backgrounds who strike lucky, but by no means the majority. Let’s face it, there are a finite number of jobs so for one person to do better someone else has to do worse - and the wealthy won’t allow their kids to do worse.

That’s why I think it’s generational social
mobility.

I genuinely think that it can. I worked with disadvantaged young people and it was not unusual for them to have never been anywhere outside the local area (no holidays, no day trips to even the nearest city, let alone London) and never to have talked in any meaningful way with people other than family or school and college friends.

University, even if it’s only the local one, exposes them to a wider range of people and a wider range of ideas, in addition to the education and ultimate qualification.

For some it doesn’t make any difference, but for a significant number it gives them the opportunity to fly.

I’ve got a number of students in my mind now - students for whom university was transformational. And they are all young people who would have been kept in their social boxes if we try to ring-fence educational opportunities for the already privileged and don’t keep working on widening and improving access.

@Merangh .

I think you are correct but it is a really depressing state of affiairs. I think work experience and internships are important but getting these depends on as you say connections. My daughter goes to a comp and basically the only company that could be found to give careers talks was a local child care company. Larger professional companies and institutions basically don't allocate resource to going into average comprehensives. I suppose it is in their interests to target grammar schools and the independent sector. Nursing seems also a popular vocation for girls given local hospitals and they are keen to highlight their profession in the school.

The upshot is that there isn't much of a horizon to show my daughter in terms of what can be achieved (or whether it's necessary) to aim for her target grades of 8s (or even 9s). It simply is not apparent from her perspective what is to be gained a by putting in the extra hours and limiting extra curricular activities to receive the grades. The emphasis at least from a careers perspective is 'don't worry about grades as there are plenty of jobs if you pass GCSE English and maths at a minimum level). There aren't a huge number of well paid professional people within our circle and location to talk about their jobs.

It just seems if you don't go to a grammar or independent school there is a bit of a culture of know your place. Parents concerns in general revolve around SEND provision rather than an interest in academic results.

It really makes me wish sometimes that I could afford private education or we had relocated to a grammar area (but tuition costs and house prices....)

@JocelynBurnell

and there the rub.....you can get spectacularly good grades and go to good universities but with a non vocational degree you still need that something extra. Again the question is , is it really worth busting a gut to get grades to get to 'better' universities when there is a continuous emphasis on diversity for a lot of professions with university blind applicatiions?

unless you have a very specific profession in mind e.g. medicine the chase for the very good GCSE profile seems a little superfluous and pursuit of a vanity project. You may get an esteem boost with your 8s but how much do employers care? We are continually told GCSE s and A levels are just gateways to next education level which ultimately leads to university where to be frank it is relatively easy to get a 2:1 or 1st if look at the whole range of options available.

I suppose if you have extremely good grades there is the option of a punt at Oxbridge but it takes 5 minutes looking at threads here to see the level of competition now. You could win for an RG university but then you hear the refrain of ex polys degrees being of the same value and the RG is just a marketing exercise. Again these are all factors that act to push against aspiratiion. (Unless of course you have the connectiins).

I’ll tell you how university does help with social mobility - marriage. I know a number of people from poor backgrounds who went to uni then struggled to get decent jobs. But they met their partners at uni - and they’re from wealthier backgrounds with parents in professional jobs. So even though these individuals didn’t succeed in their own right, they did move up socially because they married up to a successful partner, and their kids have opportunities and connections through their wealthy parent.

I include myself in this - I have better qualifications than DH but he had the extracurriculars and connections to get a decent job while I didn’t. But I still have a nice house on his salary and my kids have extracurriculars paid for by his parents, and work experience etc arranged through his network.

@mids2019 I think your DCs have correctly identified the fact that the English education system is primarily set up for exam results to take you on to the next level.

It is true that a lot of employers won't care about GCSEs (or possibly even A levels in some cases) once people have degrees. And most universities don't ask for A level grades if you are applying for a Masters.

FWIW the way I pitched it to my DCs was that better grades give you more options along the way. It maybe that they still choose a former poly because it is particularly strong in a specific sector (Oxford Brookes' engineering degrees are very highly regarded in the automotive industry, for example), but the higher their A level grades, the greater the range of options that will be available to them.

My husband was on a social mobility charity. He was a lawyer, and they tried to match law firms with kids who did not do the usual Oxbridge /LSE/whatever high ranking uni route, and/or were from a disadvantaged background. However these kids still had to be very bright and have done very well at uni otherwise they just wouldn't be cut out for it. But mentoring and encouragement hopefully helped a few get somewhere they wouldn't normally.
Don't forget that people often stop themselves from moving up because they think it's not for them, they don't deserve it, it's not what their type do...that ingrained belief is what needs changing.
So often on these threads there's that 'X university is full of privately educated rich white kids' and they get put off. This needs to be tackled at a far younger age; I worked at an inner city school and one of the big unis offered a full scholarship to two kids a year from a disadvantaged background from a certain area if they maintained a certain GPA (this was in the US). Sadly not one student had made it for the whole time I was there. The priority was getting a job, any job, to help pay the rent, and the fact that university could lead to better opportunities just didn't ring true with them as they'd never seen anyone like them do it.

I thought this a good topic as I think my children are being offered little incentive to improve their potential GCSE marks through increased study as they are coming out with the argument 'well you don't have to have great GCSEs or A levels as you will still get into a uni and get a degree and that's all employers want'.
At the moment! Things could easily change by the time they get to the job-seeking stage. Have they thought of that?

Besides, don't they have personal pride and the desire to do well? That's what shines through at interview. Grades will get the interview but personality will get the job.

Some careers are more accessible the more family money there is. Medicine has many prep options, some fantastic ones in London but they cost £1000. Prohibitive for working class families. I’d you can afford these then the stronger the application.

This is not accurate. Such programmes are totally unnecessary for a Medicine application and will not strengthen an application at all, in fact potentially the opposite. You do need a subscription for a Medify package for a couple of months for preparation for the clinical entrance exams (£50/month) but some schools pay for this. You may also need to travel to interview but medical schools can help with this if necessary.

However, there are other barriers to less affluent DC doing a Medicine degree. Family money certainly helps if you are doing a five-year degree with very limited free time to work part-time to earn some money. You will be on placement over most of the summer holidays for example. Also, you start work on a pretty miserable salary and still have to pay examination costs etc. etc. so less affluence DC must be put off by the financial considerations.

@senua

A little teenage rebellion I am afraid but I take your point entirely.

You’re wrong.

First- yea this wasn’t a degree job years ago now it is.
Events management is a specialised business degree.

@Merangh

Really interesting point.

Without going full Jane Austen I think there is a point that people can potentially 'marry well' from university or the opportunities it gives them. If nothing else they will meet potential partners from a wide geographical area.

I don't think I'd mention it to my daughter though....(yet 🙂)

I think the way you look at it is spot on. Maximise your opportunities and take all the chances you can to stand out from the rest.

The fewer doors kids close on their way through the school system, the better.

My DP had to prove his GCSE qualifications from years ago to secure a new role recently, and I had to do the same for Maths and English for a qualification I am taking through work (I did my GCSEs 20 years ago!). These requirements pop up in unexpected ways as you move through life, so the better your marks, the better prepared you are for your future choices.

£50/ month is prohibitive to our students. And we don’t pay for them. But good to hear the expensive coaching options aren’t worth it.

@Rummikub the £50/month package for a couple of months is helpful but not necessary. You can get a £15 book on Amazon that covers the same material. The expensive coaching truly is a total waste of money but it annoys me that it is marketed in the way it is and that parents feel pressurised to buy into it and DC may feel disadvantaged if they don't have it. What medical schools are really keen on are paid part-time jobs rather than fancy work shadowing experiences.

Yes you’re right the marketing is quite intense.
There’s one that I keep getting emails for that offers workshops in London for medicine, dentistry and law etc. They offer pick up from the train station for additional ££££.

I generally suggest volunteering In care homes/ hospice. Seen some great applications where the student has part time work in restaurants.

Interesting points about 'paid' work experience courses. The question is do they make a difference. There may be those in a profession that want WE to be as close to the profession as possible as it shows commitment and I suppose it is down to the views of individual recruitment panels on diversity.

In reality with medicine given grade inflation and the fact that extremely good GCSE profiles are concentrated on a certain selection of schools I imagine that there really won't be a huge range of background of medics in reality.

In a way medicine could act as a spur to get students like my daughter to start putting in the effort of they knew of the grade profile necessary to pursue this particular career.

It is the fact we lost engineering jobs because of the industries moving out in the last few decades. Threats of AI and robots are not far away.

DD met a girl at a university open day who was quite open that she wasn't that interested in getting a degree - she just wanted to meet a husband who could command a good salary, so she could become a SAHM.

I was pleased to see that DD was as gobsmacked as I was.