Uni choices: what you like vs what pays the rent. What would you tell a teenager?

[CForCake]

A younger relative will choose her A level subjects next year and wants to talk about university choices to me and my partner at a family event in a few weeks.

I am curious about comparing views and experiences on how other people have framed the matter of studying what you like vs what pays the rent.

My view is that (almost) any decision can be the right one if it is an informed decision.

So don't study business law or banking thinking you will get the most meaningful, creative, impactful jobs making the world a better place, but at the same time don't study gender or media studies thinking that you will get a high-paying job.

From previous conversations, this girl like STEM subjects and liked the idea of becoming a teacher.
My issue with that is that she may not appreciate that 1 or 2 generations ago a couple with two teacher jobs could buy a flat and raise a family in London, while that has become impossible now, without financial help from the family (which she won't get). She always said she's frugal and doesn't care about money, but there is not wanting a Ferrari and there is not being able to afford rent and childcare. It's easy to say you don't care about money when you don't work and everything is paid for by your parents.

If she brings up teaching again, I would mention that she needs to appreciate that being a teacher is financially very challenging in London, and might mean relocating somewhere else with a cheaper cost of living.

At the same time, I would never tell her to consider banking or law or tech just because of the money.

So what is a reasonable balance?

And to add to the above, the company my DH works for offers a finder's fee to employees who recommend people for jobs if the person gets the job, I think it's about £500. But that's engineering, it might be completely different in finance.

@Sweetpeasaremadeforbees If you have business nous and a strong sense of self worth you can make money as an engineer. DH is FICE, FIStructE and FCIHT - so probably quite rare! It’s a case of building up a practice and getting work that pays well and staff are competent (and paid well) to get it done. Not so easy these days and no doubt finance people earn more. The problem is those jobs are super competitive, engineering jobs aren’t. Engineering is open to engineers, finance jobs are open to anyone numerate. I’m lucky - DH made a lot of money!

As for written work - DH despairs too. Engineering tutors don’t seem to think it matters. It does. Engineers are representing their firm. Who wants to send out poorly written reports full of grammatical and spelling errors to clients?

OhDear111 My DH earns a really good wage in engineering because he studied for a Masters and moved into the contract law area. But it's taken him over 30 years and he started out after his degree on site working in all weathers. I spent part of our honeymoon helping him with setting out in the snow on the Huddersfield ring road! We are miraculously still married.

I think unlike in finance, it takes a few years and a lot of experience to earn decent money in CE.

@Sweetpeasaremadeforbees Ha! DH set out A5 diversion in Milton Keynes. The great days of working in the resident engineer’s site team! Before that a short lived stint with a contractor. Yes, it takes time to build up but DH was a partner in his company at 27. Chartered at 24. I do think it’s harder now.

@Sweetpeasaremadeforbees But on MN I get the impression that only those with maths degrees will get well paid jobs, in the real world I'd be amazed if there are the jobs available for all these maths graduates.

I agree, I find MN quite simplistic about "STEM" degrees being this ticket to a well-paid job. To me a maths degree is basically a philosophy degree. I would assume you are very smart and love exploring deeply abstract concepts. I think perhaps people think that "maths" is very practical because they know you need it to do, say, engineering or finance - but the latter are the courses that have practical jobs linked to them.

Your other point re: connections is important too. If you already know you're going to get a job in consulting or whatever, you pick something intellectual that you can make conversation about, maybe the partner in your interview did Classics or Maths Tripos as well! If anything a "practical" degree may be an ever so slightly negative class signal.

If you do not have such connections the best bang for your personal buck may be something more explicitly career oriented. I get the impression people don't like to say this as they don't want to sound like they're saying poor people shouldn't study classics, or something. But I think individuals should be aware of the source of advice - if someone is saying they did just fine with their philosophy degree but doesn't mention that their first job came from mummy's connections at that art gallery...

@OneAmberFinch There’s a wide view on what a good salary is too! Some dc earn reasonably well but I often find quoted salaries very far behind what my DD1 earns but parents on here think they are very good. It rather depends where you are in the uk! London is very different from Lincoln.

Maths grads can often get jobs in any numeracy field. Like nearly every degree, where the degree is from matters and ability of grad to be flexible.

We also know we have thousands of grads who cannot get jobs but it’s not mathematicians. Low paying jobs tend to be populated by arts and degrees like English and philosophy. Students who want a chance of earning well, who study such A level subjects, now opt for law.

Fair, I do agree on the whole - my view might be tainted by knowing quite a few pure maths grads who went into academia which is very much not what I consider a high paying position!

Do what interests you, because God knows what will happen with anything, for one thing. I mean, IT used to be a dead-set solid career, but currently it sounds like graduate roles have dried up due to automation of basic tasks.

Oldest DC has just applied for anthropology - his heart is set in working in museums but we haven't had to have the 'making a living' conversation. He is realistic about his prospects - he knows it's a lot of people after very few jobs, which don't pay well, and that careers in it are very vulnerable to fluctuations in funding. He expects to work a second job early in his career if he starts in museums. I wouldn't try to convince my kids to do something highly paid ahead of something they are interested in. But then we are relatively privileged, I know it's not an option for everyone.

It's strange to me that humanities and MFLs are no longer valued by some as good degrees. Imagine if no one dud essay subjects? Imagine if everyone was just studying science? How useful would it seem then?

In the 80s the general received opinion was that a degree in humanities was the starting point for a career anywhere other than science and a degree in science could be the same but also could have a vocational route. Why have we devalued humanities ?

@OneAmberFinch I don’t know any who did! Teaching (ok similar) accountancy, train planning on lines (vital but not sure it has a name), varied finance work, international consulting, and actuarial. Several with degrees from Cambridge and Warwick. The one with the quiet personality struggled more but also had a 2:2. He plans the trains with his “maths” skills.

So isn't planning the trains a good career? There can't be many people whose job it is to do that. I'd take it over banking any day

@Denim4ever Not sure I was saying they weren’t good careers. I was saying they weren’t progressing towards lecturing in universities: they have a variety of careers. That is good in my view and was the point I was making. The ones working in London almost certainly need to earn more to afford to live and buy a flat there. In other areas it’s less of an imperative and the teacher is independently wealthy so make of that what you wish. He didn’t need to earn anything to buy a house, his family has numerous houses.

@Denim4ever You ask why we devalued humanities.

I would say that you cannot blame kids for preferring subjects with better career prospects, at a time when everything has become more expensive, from university to housing to childcare.

Also, I think there are more graduates in the humanities than in STEM, so it's not surprising that the latter have better careers. https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/19-01-2023/sb265-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects

There was a time when you could join a bank with a degree in theology or classics. I'm not sure if that's still the same. Nor am I sure how right that was.

I don't work in a bank, but I remember, when I was at the beginning of my career, giving a presentation to some senior manager with one of these degrees, and he couldn't even understand the concept of percentiles and statistical distributions. He should not have been there at all.

OP - have you not talked yourself into the realisation by now that it’s not so much the degree that’s important, as the individual doing it? You are trying to treat your relative as a statistic. If you see her as a statistic, you don’t know her well enough to give her helpful advice.

@Walkaround ??????? In what way would I be treating her as a statistic?

For me it's all about making informed decisions. Statistics are important in informing decisions. Of course you must know how to interpret them, not mistake correlation for causation, and understand all the other million factors at play. Sure.

But what do you mean by treating her as an individual?
if she wants to study theology or gender studies, sure, she should do it, as long as hers is an informed decision.

Saying it's all about the individual, or pointing to examples like "I know a person who studied X and now earns loads" are irrelevant and do not lead to informed decisions.

Then horses for courses, of course.

needlessly aggressive even when discussing something banal and relatively uncontroversial

Teachers make at or above median salary for graduates. But OP thinks that's not enough money for her niece. This attitude sounds like snobbery to me, and then OP wonders why people are riled. <HeyHo>

Also, OP describes individual examples of people in X situation who have ended up making lots of money followed by complaining at other posters by "Saying "I know a person who" means absolutely nothing.".

In my world, many young people struggle to have skills or be motivated to improve themselves or battle with poor mental health and low self-esteem, those are the things that actually hold them back. I want to say something useful about advising my own kids on postGCSE options but am not even close to being at the same starting place as OP, so doubt I could say anything OP doesn't proceed to diss.

Bank work at graduate level isn't just about stats, it's also about policy and customer service. Those working in some roles need statistical skills most, those working in others need people skills most.

All I want to say is @OP, you are asking all the right brilliant questions, especially what most don't do, which is tying university and career choices & Outcomes together. The young relative is very lucky to have you to advise her.

@lljkk Teachers make at or above median salary for graduates. But OP thinks that's not enough money for her niece. This attitude sounds like snobbery to me

With the greatest of respect, you have understood absolutely nothing.
The whole point of the thread is making informed decisions.

I have repeated multiple times that I will support her whatever decision she makes, as long as it is an informed one.
Money and career prospects are part of an informed decision.
Knowing that certain fields will make it easier to live in another city from the one you grew up in is part of an informed decision.

Could you please kindly explain to me where the snobbery would be?

None of this means that she must work in London for Amazon Goldman Sachs etc. Again: it's all about informed decisions.

Oh, and I will certainly hope that, whatever she studies, she develops better text comprehension skills than those displayed by so many people here who keep misunderstanding such a banal point.

OP describes individual examples of people in X situation who have ended up making lots of money followed by complaining at other posters by "Saying "I know a person who" means absolutely nothing.

Where would I have said that she should just assume that every case I know of must be representative?

@Denim4ever Those working in some roles need statistical skills most, those working in others need people skills most.

Sure, but if your role involves taking decisions based on large amounts of data, and you struggle to understand the concept of percentile (he didn't have to solve a stochastic partial differential equation...) then there is something wrong. Or do you disagree?

I disagree because certain tiles require statistical skills and other roles require an overview of statistical skills given to the manager by someone with statistical skills. Not every statistician can write a report, not every humanities graduate can be the main stats person

Understanding the concept of percentiles is like understanding fractions : it's a basic life skill. Percentiles may be less useful to the average person when shopping at Tesco, but they are certainly required knowledge for anyone making decisions based on large amounts of data.
Saying it's the job of statistician to explain percentiles is like saying it's the job of a mathematician to explain percentages or fractions to a manager without a background in maths

And now back to the usual bullshit unnecessary toxic aggressive comments which are turning mumsnet into a kind of reddit for frustrated and bitchy mums...

Love, why are you taking it out on me? Is all good at home? Family and job OK? What is troubling you? Do you need someone to talk to?

My irony meter just exploded 😆

Anyway OP, about job opportunities in the future - AI is coming for a whole tranche of consultants, legal jobs, banking jobs, accountancy jobs, tech jobs, analyst jobs, quant jobs. It's already happening.

Ironically, teaching is probably pretty future-proof, for the next few decades at least.

And manual jobs! Where was that poster on a construction site "AI, build this"?

Management skills are not all statistical.