To think that most degrees are a waste?

[Bellamari]

https://archive.ph/4PdgM

The author of the article has an undergraduate degree, two masters and a PhD. All totally useless in terms of getting a job.

I have to agree that the current high fees require students to consider education as an investment in a future job. They need to consider whether their degree will actually lead to a job - and if it doesn’t, then pick something else.

Schools and colleges (and society in general) are still telling people to “follow their passion”, but often this leads to an investment of 5-15 years and £50-150k, with no job at the end of it, and no time or money left to retrain in a field where there actually are jobs. PhDs in particular are a total waste considering the lack of jobs for most graduates.

Full disclosure - I’m one of those who was encouraged to follow my passion, do postgraduate degrees because I was so clever, and then left high and dry with no job prospects.

Stupid post. A waste of what? How Gradgrindian so many have become. So what's the alternative? Get a boring job and hope your sector is not abolished by tech in your 60 years of working life? University is about so much more than job skills.

Well, it's certainly true that being well-educated doesn't = a guaranteed well-paid job. If you want to be well-paid, you really have to be quite ruthless about what you study and which industry you go into.

If you see a degree purely in terms of the means to get a well paid job, then most will be a waste of time and money.

If you see it as the opportunity to spend 3 or 4 years studying a subject you love before having to settle down to the daily grind, earning money to pay the bills, then they are not a waste of either time or money.

My interpretation of the article is the author disagrees with you, she says she would still do degrees- just not four degrees in French- because who does four degrees in french without having a very clear employment plan? - clearly at 40 with a phd in the subject she should only have done that if she needed it for a better career advancement.

The purpose of education is not to get a job.

Some education helps in getting a job.
Some doesn't.

Post grad research degrees are essentially an apprenticeship into academia so no reason why they should help get a different job.

YANBU.

i say this as someone who read at a decent uni…my secondary education was much more formative.

If that’s the case then why are they accepting 10x more students than there are jobs? People are doing PhDs because they want to be academics, but only a small percentage ever get a job. Realistically one professor needs to train one student as a replacement - not 100.

I think the author is saying that due to the huge amount of money a degree costs nowadays, people must see it as the means to get a job, not just as studying their passion.

Universities in the UK are moving away from being primarily centres of research and teaching/learning, to being businesses. It's the American model (where it's even worse: they're businesses which sometimes value their real estate more highly than their people, and their media contracts (college sports) even more highly than that. The UK isn't that bad, yet, and thankfully doesn't have the college sport distraction). All English-speaking universities will have to go the same way sooner or later, because there's limited funding available for research and academia and people are mobile.

Students need to be aware of this before they commit. Actually, their parents and school advisors need to be aware of this because it's too much to ask of a 17/18yo.

I tell my DC those years between 15-25 are incredible for being largely free of responsibilities, funded by parents, able and willing to focus and concentrate for prolonged periods, and still full of hope and optimism. But the real world will beckon. I'm all for them indulging their pursuits, but they need a plan for the future especially my DD who will need to factor in a ticking biological clock.

It's hard. We were paid by the state to go to university. It's the opposite now.

I think schools are changing their advice. I know more students are now being encouraged in the direction of vocational degrees. Law, Business Studies, Medicine and associated degrees,nursing, physiotherapy.

A degree is better than no degree, but a bad degree isn't much more value than useless.

Sure, a Harry Potter degree teaches you studying and writing skills, etc, but in terms of industry value, it's a waste of time.

And some degrees are (sadly) becoming worthless due to the advent of AI. French as mentioned. I as an employer would always choose a French native speaking English rather than an educated Brit. But even then, with AI, practically worthless... foresight is a wonderful thing.

Students need to be aware of this before they commit. Actually, their parents and school advisors need to be aware of this because it's too much to ask of a 17/18yo.
This is what I think too. Parents and advisors need to be directing teenagers towards degrees that lead to jobs. It’s bad for upward mobility though, because if the teenager’s parents didn’t go to university themselves then they probably don’t have this knowledge.

I teach very part time in a small university. It is offering a smaller range of subjects. Goodbye English, Philosophy, Humanities etc. It is opening a medical school.
If students are going to end up with a huge loan, they want a guaranteed job at the end.

but often this leads to an investment of 5-15 years and £50-150k, with no job at the end of it, and no time or money left to retrain in a field where there actually are jobs.

I disagree with this. You literally pay nothing for education unless you earn more than a job that doesn't require a degree.
The cost of education needs to born by someone. As people have mentioned a university education is about more than just getting a job at the end. The only wasted degree us one where you should have got a better classification but couldn't ge arsed. But even this is a lesson in itself.

That’s not what young people are being sold though.

If it was far fewer would go.

I hope so. I know a number of young people in their 20s who’ve spent upwards of £50k studying their passion, only to find there’s no job at the end of it. They’ve ended up in factory jobs, admin jobs, call centres, with huge debt to pay off and nothing to show for it.

I would hope that anyone with the intelligence and analytical skills needed to do a PhD would also have the capability to assess whether or not that PhD is likely to help them succeed in the job market. Similarly, I would hope that anyone hoping to pursue a career in academia would have the foresight to look at job prospects before embarking on a research degree. I do agree though that some young people are unnecessarily encouraged into undergraduate studies without really knowing what they're hoping to get from them.

Undoubtedly, there are lots of unemployable graduates and lots of unemployable PhDs. I've interviewed loads of them over the years. I don't think that getting a job is the sole purpose of education though. Education can be wonderful purely for its own sake, as a means of personal development and challenge etc.

Rather than persuading young people to only view education as a means to an end, I think it would be much more helpful to support them in developing the skills that will make them valuable to employers. Simply having a degree or a PhD won't be enough for most jobs, so we need to help young people think more proactively about how they are developing the skills that will make them useful and attractive to employers, and we need to discourage them from believing that a degree at any level somehow entitles them to a job.

The evidence suggests you are wrong. Most (but not all) undergraduate degrees give a financial benefit.

The impact of undergraduate degrees on lifetime earnings | Institute for Fiscal Studies (ifs.org.uk)

but you need to earn enough money or it’s a waste of time and student debt…..so really the choice of degree needs to be a means to a good career ….and if you enjoy it all the better.
I have a degree in nursing…..and an MSc in Public Health ……the post grad wasn’t exactly that enjoyable…..but it was paid for by the nhs and I carried on receiving my salary…..and it allowed me to apply for promotion to a better paid role….so it served a purpose…..I could have left my role and done a Masters in something I enjoyed more……but would have had to self fund the qualification and not received a salary at the same time as studying….. so that was a no brainer.

I don’t think that’s the case. You only have to earn about £25k to start repaying your loan. Lots of jobs that don’t require a degree pay £30-50k.

The problem is this attitude that “education is about more than just getting a job”. It’s so expensive nowadays that it can’t be about anything other than getting a job!

Well my DH 'followed his passion' has a PhD and is basically unemployable outside of academia.

He somehow missed the message of 'follow your passion to a sensibly paid job as you will have to pay for food and housing'

However I and his siblings all did get this memo and our degrees are central to our employment.

Contrary to what the author writes, you can still do a one year graduate law conversion course. Not sure what the writer of the article is talking about!

I do think there is an issue with Universities producing too many PhDs in some arts and humanities subjects. More than the academic job market can absorb, which really isn't fair.

You fundamentally misunderstand. Of course they will not all be professors, but researchers need research degrees.

We all need the research, the students in many cases are doing work on vital research projects.

Or do you want research into cancer, dementia etc. to slow down?

We need educated people, we need skilled researchers.

While some study for fun, I think the majority get degrees in the hope of getting a good career to be able to afford nice things. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case (but I’ve not done a survey).

This is so narrow-minded it is hard to know where to start!

But really, has anyone ever said 'I want our country to be less well-educated than our competitors' and explained how that will strengthen the nation or improve our lives?