Do we have too many students?

[Saracen]

It's also worth pointing out, though it's not directly on-topic, that many employers are now looking at more than just the degree. They're looking for personality too. So .... what do you do with your spare time? re you a go-getter? Have you been involved in running/organising anything, from a small business to a Uni club or society? And so on.

It's not enough to have a degree, and not always even enough to have a good one from a good uni. They're also looking at what the back story says about 'who you 'are. So a bit of thought and planning, and a lot of effort, in that area could well pay off. And start it, if you can, before you get as far as uni.

[TAKTAK]

Yes, yes there are.

But the way i see it, it can't hurt my chances later on down the line can it?

Especially so from a social perspective...

But i had a year out working before hitting uni (i was originally dead set against it) so have a little bit more life experience than some here [in terms of uni people, not HEXUS people...] (i'm not pertaining to be an oracle or anything, i just know a smidgen more about what to expect in the real world), with an open job offer at the end of it if i really want to go back....

So from my point of view, it was more logical to go to uni, even though i didn't want to, than stay in work on menial pay in a less than favourable job market...

[Andeh13]

I think so. Especially for those doing candy floss degrees! Really, a degree in dance...theatre studies....drama....art...a lot of **ologys....what do they expect to achieve!?

[Lucio]

But by extension, does (for instance) accountancy need a degree?

No idea it'd take brighter men than me to figure out what needs a degree and what would benefit from a one year preparation course.

[Saracen]

No idea it'd take brighter men than me to figure out what needs a degree and what would benefit from a one year preparation course.

Bear in mind, the actual accountancy is taught in a mix of on-the-job training and evening study, with a few weeks of full-time study thrown in over three years. And, since any degree is acceptable as an entry qualification, the implication is that the degree is just pre-selection and not inherently useful. And if those with "circumstances" can do it without a degree, then it's possible to do it without a degree.

My conclusion .... you don't need a degree to be a chartered accountant, though perhaps you do need to be bright enough and focussed enough to be able to get one. It's merely a convenient filtering mechanism, but not essential for the job because you don't actually use the degree on the job. And I'd bet that's true of a lot of jobs, excepting only those careers where the degree provides the groundwork for what you do later. I suspect a career as a particle physicist might be a bit more of a challenge if your degree is in Ancient Greek or Golf Course Management.

[Biscuit]

just for the record, whilst i did get a 1:1 i went to a non Russell Group uni (Salford) and i got a job within a week of graduating. After asking i found that it was a lot to do with my extra curricular activities such as my IT, theater, live video and art that really helped me bump to the top of the queue. I had a cracking time at university; i worked hard and i played hard and whilst i was reasonably lucky, even if i hadn't been and had ended up in something less interesting, i dont think i would go back and do it differently given the option.
Saying that, while i was there is was abundantly clear that there is a poor student to teacher ratio and a lot of them struggle to give the students the information and attention that they pay for. I think this has started to degrade the actual point in having a degree not only because there are so many post grads out there but because a lot of them don't get the education they actually went there to get.
This cant be entirely blamed on the teacher though, i know there is a high proportion of people who go to uni just to drink and have a good time, don't actually care about the education they are receiving. It would be good to see these numbers reducing.

[TooNice]

But by extension, does (for instance) accountancy need a degree?

Maybe not everyone, some people just seem born for certain tasks, but a well designed course should enable learn how to be somewhat competent at the chosen subject right? One of my former computing science classmate in didn't even bother completing his degree. He was hired before graduation and given a good position at a penetration testing firm because he was very good at it.

No doubt that many white hats learn their trade without following a computing curriculum. Yet one of my other friend took a longer route by doing for a Master before ending at the same destination. AFAIK, he is now a very competent white hat in his own right, certainly enough to advance in his company.

Would he have discovered that path had he not gone through Uni? Would he have been as employable had he not used the MSc course as a chance to advance his skills (possibly not). That said, I heard that he was one of last entered his company as a graduate, and they only take experienced folks since.

[Nerval]

It's also worth pointing out, many employers are now looking at more than just the degree. They're looking for personality too. So .... what do you do with your spare time? re you a go-getter? Have you been involved in running/organising anything, from a small business to a Uni club or society? And so on.

It's not enough to have a degree, and not always even enough to have a good one from a good uni. They're also looking at what the back story says about 'who you 'are. So a bit of thought and planning, and a lot of effort, in that area could well pay off. And start it, if you can, before you get as far as uni.

Dead right.
With nobody ever being allowed to fail an exam (an exaggeration, I know) and everybody having similar qualifications, employers have got to find some way to pick out the bright sparks from the rest, and this is exactly where it comes out.

Do you sit at home all day and night posting on Facebook and playing Crysis? Do you expect an employer to be impressed by that.
When I used to recruit, I never ceased to be surprised at the number of people who listed "reading" and nothing else as their extra-curricular activities (that was the days before computer games lol).
It's actually quite easy to pick out the people you'd like to work for you, and it would be just as easy to point out to the rest why they don't get the job, or even an interview.

[Saracen]

Dead right.
With nobody ever being allowed to fail an exam (an exaggeration, I know) and everybody having similar qualifications, employers have got to find some way to pick out the bright sparks from the rest, and this is exactly where it comes out.

Do you sit at home all day and night posting on Facebook and playing Crysis? Do you expect an employer to be impressed by that.
When I used to recruit, I never ceased to be surprised at the number of people who listed "reading" and nothing else as their extra-curricular activities (that was the days before computer games lol).
It's actually quite easy to pick out the people you'd like to work for you, and it would be just as easy to point out to the rest why they don't get the job, or even an interview.

The advice I was given in the post-Uni recruitment round, though, was to be understated on what you put on the "other interests" part of a CV. If you said you were interested in reading, music (playing three instruments), building model aircraft, played football, rugby and cricket, were part of a mountaineering team and a scuba instructor, a County cyclist, President of your local AmDram society
and volunteered to do charity work for your Church three time a week, not only would they not believe you, but they'd question if you'd have the energy to do anything more than sleep at your desk during the inconvenient bit of life (working for a living) that interrupted your active social calendar.

Okay, I've over-egged it a bit, but you know what I mean.

I was actively encouraged to downplay anything that might be seen as too involving, and to concentrate on just making it clear I actually had a personality, and to include a point or two of interest that would give an opening for lines of conversation in an interview, but not to overdo it.

Funnily, though, I was an active theatre-goer in those days, and I put that on my CV. A friend thought it was a good idea, and copied it. Some of the jobs we were applying for were the same, and so were some of the interviewers. Imagine my friend's consternation when it turned out the interviewing partner at a firm we were both applying to was also a theatre nut, and had seen many of the same performances I had (and he tested the bullpoop quotient in my claims before telling me that). We spent 5 minutes discussing the academic issues, and over an hour, over three cups of coffee, talking theatre and about various productions. My friend, who was seeing him the next day, went white, then a sickly shade of green, when I told him.

I got the job offer, by the way. My friend didn't.

The moral of the tale, clearly, is that having some interests is useful, but just saying you do carries dangers.

But I agree that recruiters these days are looking for well-rounded and capable individuals, and while having a degree used to make you stand out a bit, it typically never was enough on it's own, and these days, it doesn't even make you stand out much. So achievements outside of academic life are often a very good indicator of personality and character, and any students not consciously and actively (and sincerely) building a back-story like that are seriously missing a trick.

[peterb]

Are there too many students? Probably not - are there too many University students? Yes, almost certainly.

One of the (IMHO) cruellest tricks foisted on the public by successive governments is the false aspirations. While everyone should be encouraged to reach their full potential, that potential may not include education to degree level - but while degree education has been promoted, alternative forms of higher (or further) education have been ignored.

The result is that the degree has now become devalued, and worse still, access to higher education is now based more on ability to pay than it is on academic ability.

[Saracen]

Maybe not everyone, some people just seem born for certain tasks, but a well designed course should enable learn how to be somewhat competent at the chosen subject right? One of my former computing science classmate in didn't even bother completing his degree. He was hired before graduation and given a good position at a penetration testing firm because he was very good at it.

No doubt that many white hats learn their trade without following a computing curriculum. Yet one of my other friend took a longer route by doing for a Master before ending at the same destination. AFAIK, he is now a very competent white hat in his own right, certainly enough to advance in his company.

Would he have discovered that path had he not gone through Uni? Would he have been as employable had he not used the MSc course as a chance to advance his skills (possibly not). That said, I heard that he was one of last entered his company as a graduate, and they only take experienced folks since.

Oh, it's a mixed situation, and I'm certainly not saying degrees are never useful. Clearly, they are, and if the subject of the degree is the same as the subject of the career, it may be mandatory as well as useful.

My point in the post you quoted though, was that for some careers where a degree is seen as close to mandatory, the subject of the degree need have no bearing at all on the subject of the career. How useful would a degree in film studies be to a biologist? Or sociology to a bridge-building engineer?

That's the case with accountancy (at least, UK Chartered accountancy, and as it was several decades ago, because I've no idea what current standards are). While some people (including me) had a degree with some relevance, it was merely having any degree that met the criteria for entry, and what it was in didn't matter in getting in. It might exempt you from a little bit of the (minimum of) three more years of study and exams needed to qualify, but it didn't affect getting the job. So I take it to mean that having the degree proves you're capable if getting it, which indicates a certain level of brightness, of ability to apply yourself, to organise your thoughts and express yourself, and so on, but that's all they're interested in.

So .... having the degree proves you can get it, but not having one certainly doesn't prove you couldn't get one, nor does it prove you couldn't do the accountancy job, and therefore despite the fact that it's almost mandatory to have one, it's only a filtering mechanism, and doesn't rely on the education you got doing the degree. I still wonder, therefore, if a more involved recruitment process at 18, and an extra 3 years actual experience, might not set someone up better for accountancy than a degree in Latin or zoology at age 21?

[kalniel]

So .... having the degree proves you can get it, but not having one certainly doesn't prove you couldn't get one, nor does it prove you couldn't do the accountancy job, and therefore despite the fact that it's almost mandatory to have one, it's only a filtering mechanism, and doesn't rely on the education you got doing the degree. I still wonder, therefore, if a more involved recruitment process at 18, and an extra 3 years actual experience, might not set someone up better for accountancy than a degree in Latin or zoology at age 21?

They do that already. Accountancy programmes take on both graduates and school leavers these days, with that latter having to complete additional training. At the end of the day the qualification is assessed the same way, so if you don't pass you don't pass. But I think that kind of proves the point that uni education helps you learn how to learn, even if you're going on to learn about a new subject afterwards.

[oolon]

I think we have to many university graduates. This has resulted in the requirement for people to have degrees for jobs that previously they would have not have. This results in the devaluing of other kinds of education. How many people who did a Languages or Arts degree use them one bit in there day to day work. I did a degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science and use very little of that knowledge either, those the exposer to the early internet did have quite an effect. A friend of mine who is a fantastic Unix Systems administrator passed all the Google interviews only for the management to reject him because he did not have a degree.

Year on year the marks get higher for school leavers exams (this devalues them and the effort so many pupils* have put in), this forgets an important fact about examination, which is to grade you against your peers, not just some bench mark. (As knowing the bench mark allows people to train to it).

* we are even calling School children "students" now.

[oolon]

Honestly? I don't know.That's why I pointed out that it was a 'statistic' on a BBC program that the number of employers that won't even consider non-Russell grads has tripled.

However that statistic does not show what proposition of total employers don't except them. If it tripled from 1 to 3, then that matters little if its 5% of total graduate only positions that is important. I have a 2.1 from a Russell University, while I do question the value of some courses, this is where outside accreditation works best, such as with Engineering Institutions. However if you are never going to use the skills anywhere what does not matter where you got them from?

I was told when at university, be nice to the Arts students their fees subsidise the engineering departments.

[TooNice]

[...]

My point in the post you quoted though, was that for some careers where a degree is seen as close to mandatory, the subject of the degree need have no bearing at all on the subject of the career. How useful would a degree in film studies be to a biologist? Or sociology to a bridge-building engineer?

[...]

I still wonder, therefore, if a more involved recruitment process at 18, and an extra 3 years actual experience, might not set someone up better for accountancy than a degree in Latin or zoology at age 21?

Point taken. I am pretty sure that 3 years of experience would quite easily beat 3 years of unrelated education. But I suppose there are two or three issues (on top of my head, there might be more):

1. I am assuming that most people pick subjects they are interested in, and by extension, are more likely to become part of their career. Not always of course, as people's interest may change (as was my case), and others may pick subjects they have interest in, but know that getting a career out of it may be difficult (certain art / social science subjects.. well Latin is probably up there too).

2. Whether you have no experience nor degree at 18, or no experience nor relevant degree at 21, the employer, I assume, would ask why you think you are suitable for the job. The one with a degree probably has better chance to draw on his experience at Uni (and additional life experience) to answer the question, whereas the one who is 18 would probably have a harder time stepping through the door and get the 3 years experience.

3. I wonder which of the two would have it easier, between the 21 years old accountant with no degree wanting to change career (let's say become a teacher or a nurse), and the 21 years old graduate with a relevant degree but no full time work experience.

[redddraggon]

My bold:

3. I wonder which of the two would have it easier, between the 21 years old accountant with no degree wanting to change career (let's say become a teacher or a nurse), and the 21 years old graduate with a relevant degree but no full time work experience.

To do a PGCE don't you need a degree?