Too many young people pushed towards university, says UK government adviser
https://www.ft.com/content/c8f77520-e9db-4185-8725-3859aa5e86a3
Posted by 457655676
Too many young people pushed towards university, says UK government adviser
https://www.ft.com/content/c8f77520-e9db-4185-8725-3859aa5e86a3
Posted by 457655676
48 Comments
From my anecdotal experience, it is absolutely true. Too many people I know graduate with degrees completely unrelated to the field they work in.
They would be better served in on job training and not taking on debt.
This can be traced directly back to “Call me Tony” Blair and his idiotic proposal to get to 50% going to uni
Completely true from my perspective. I never really wanted to go to uni but felt pushed into it and every adult I’d talk to would take the attitude that ‘it doesn’t even matter what field you get your degree in, employers just look for a degree unless it’s a specialist field.’ While this may have had some semblance of truth forty years ago it doesn’t at all now. I’ve got a completely pointless degree.
Don’t go to Uni. Don’t do nothing. Don’t find any job when you search.
Wtaf do they want young people to do, aside from be blamed for their lack of options?!
When I was in sixth form, there was an advisor to help students get into uni. There was no such advice for jobs or apprenticeships. They were clearly rated on the rate of students going to uni
I didn’t do well in my A-Levels and expressed that I didn’t feel like I was ready for uni and would rather do an apprenticeship, I was recommended HND courses instead…
Some careers need a university degree and some people go to university and do really well from it but we still have the underlying idea that clever kids go to university and get good jobs, while the thickos just do whatever jobs and scrape by, which simply isn’t true.
Too many slop universities, too much mounting student debt that is now just a government spending blackhole (last i checked, £250 billion)
I wonder if part of the problem is that we’re training people to basically make money for someone else. Uni used to be about the joy of learning, rather than just specialised job training. The commodification of tertiary education has a lot to answer for.
There is a big stigma of not going pushed by schools.
I went to a fairly well known (and very well performing) south London school and the pressure to go to uni was insane. I have a vivid memory of a presentation (I think via a gov 3rd party organisation too?) that basically said average grad wage vs average apprentice wage, and they used a low end childcare apprentice as an example, as if to shame you.
A large portion of the people I knew went to uni just because “that’s what my parents want” or “I don’t know, just seems like the thing to do.”
Even the job I have now, I’ve spoken to grads via our scheme and asked them what made them study what they did and every time it’s “just seems like a good thing to do”
Fwiw, I know myself and knew uni wasn’t ideal for me, so I went the apprenticeship route instead.
Being realistic, middle class parents aren’t going to be sending their kids to vocational schools, so when we say fewer students should be going to university, we’re talking about working class students being cut off from professional jobs
The government should just stop funding for degrees with poor outcomes, not stopping working class students going to university.
(We should however be providing better funding for vocational areas in any case)
I would say that is true.
You can earn a decent living doing a trade provided you pick the right one.
Blair was to blame for this – he pushed everyone to go to university.
It did feel quite forced, my parents wanted to me to go, I did an undergraduate not relevant to anything. I did a masters which has a lot more relevance to my field now, however the masters was my decision.
When Blair made the big push for 50% of young people to have a degree, did anyone actually agree with it?
I went to a very average school, in the 2000s, and even then going to uni was the expected path. Most kids at that age don’t have a particular direction to follow, they’re not thinking about a career, they’re just going with the flow. When the perception is that everyone goes to uni unless they’re too stupid, then most will just pick something that sounds kind of enjoyable and keep riding the wave of education.
When I went through school and sixth form it was pushed on everyone. Hardly ever heard about other oppurtunities. So many people I know (including me) have degrees, aren’t in graduate jobs or fields our degrees are in. Its the biggest farse of my generation, and I think alot of people did it because it was the done thing.
The uks tertiary education system is fantastic and people should go to Uni
The problem is the cost and the type of jobs available after
The lifetime earnings for a person not going to uni versus going to uni are quite different even though graduates are coming out with shit jobs now
I think people have this naivety about the trades where they think those professions will remain high paying if structurally thousands of people are rerouted to them
Nope the average money would go down
We should have some apprenticeship and industry options but it needs to be combined with the ai bs not against it
Why do we invent reasons for being against education?
UK and Ireland are obsessed with Degrees and what Uni you attended. It’s a class thing and completely pointless.
“We need more uneducated youngsters to do the crappy low paid jobs” – a government minister, somewhere, probably.
I can think of 1 person in my whole company whose degree is related to the work they currently do. Unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or something like that it’s completely unnecessary.
I dont think kids are being pushed to university for the sake of it – aside from hands on jobs, how many white collar jobs can you get into with just A levels? Most, if not all, professional engineering roles need degrees – a couple of them can be degree apprenticeships but things like chemical engineering don’t work for it.
We all keep acting like there are simple singular options when it comes to professional development, but the best thing would be to ensure there are a range of options for people to pursue their interests, and time and funding afforded to do it. If somebody wants an education in art, they should be able to pursue it, regardless of how it affects their future employability. If someone wants to be a plumber, there should be apprenticeships and courses available. It’s trying to one size fits all that has ended up with mass amounts of people having degrees they can’t utilise.
When I did my degree I got professional work experience every summer and it was a chance for me to mature and study. I also worked in a shop 20 hours a week during term time, which gave me lots of work experience, and build up some resilience, life is what you make it. If you come out of uni and just study for 3/4 years without any work, it’s not really going to benefit you.
This is not a new thing, when I was at uni, started in 2005 some people never worked and expected to come out of uni and start a job, only to find if they have never worked, an employer wasn’t interested.
The difference now is the debt has increased, and so people need to work out if this is the right thing to do.
I agree. I don’t think every job needs a degree (even if thats the way we’re pushing it). We should rebuild the apprentice system that Thatcher destroyed and retune the focus of the universities.
we spent 20 years telling every 18 year old they had to go to uni and now we’re surprised half of them are working jobs that never needed a degree. the issue was never the students, it was the advice.
I didn’t know what I wanted after 3 years of college in 2009. I wasn’t well, but our college wanted those stats for their “x amount of students go to university” stat.
I dropped out after 3 months, further unwell and still haven’t paid off the debt as I haven’t learnt enough but the interest has meant what I left with has doubled!
No shit. It was bad in 2002. I don’t imagine it’s any better now
Yeah, but good luck getting onto the career ladder without any degree, even if unrelated (it’s now tough even with one).
There are other routes like apprenticeship schemes but at present they’re extremely limited in number. Risk spinning your wheels trying to find a job or in a low paying job with poor progression.
So if you’re 18 may as well go and have fun at uni and at least make some progress.
Part of me wants to say everyone should be able to get a uni education if they want to and I do believe that but yes, too many people are going to university who don’t need to AND there are too many jobs asking for degrees that don’t need one. It’d be unusual to think the vast majority of people should also take up a trade so it doesn’t sound crazy when you compare.
However – I really think the solution to this was not only pushing more people to do apprenticeships but improving the apprenticeship offer overall. My partner is HR manager at her place and they hire a decent amount of apprentices, many of them aren’t the best but some of them are really bright and go on to become great engineers. The knowledge they get from the apprenticeship scheme is worth 10x what they’d get from a uni course on the same subject when looking at workplace usefulness. Apprentices need better pay though. I don’t see how anyone can be excited for going to work on less than minimum wage and yes I know there’s an arguement business don’t get much back from apprentices but it’s just not that simple – You end up getting experienced workers for considerably less money than hiring a senior outright and acclimatising them to your workplace, you get a good government subsidy for it too. Yes it’s a gamble because some apprentices aren’t great but that’s the same for anyone you hire.
ETA – out of the people I went to school with and still communicate to, those who seem most successful and happy in their jobs didn’t do A levels or Uni. They did BTECs in their fields and then apprenticeships at business’ in their fields and they’re both earning great money in jobs they are skilled at and enjoy.
Education is not just about jobs or careers, it is about critical thinking, learning how to think for yourself, learning new ideas and mixing with other bright people. And without a degree, you are limiting yourself to the types of jobs you can apply for.
I’m glad i went to uni and enjoyed my degree, but if i had more support and backing and advice on the other career option i wanted I probably wouldn’t have gone. Instead, i was told that doing art was silly, and pursuing tattooing would get me no where and i’d earn very little, and that they didn’t know how to advise me on that career path anyway. I tattoo full time and make upwards of 50-70K a year at the moment, and sometimes really wish i didn’t have that additional student loan debt coming out of my taxes every year…
To many people in government eager to tell young people what not to do and never what they should be doing.
It is absolutely true, and university doesn’t suit everyone, but rich people aren’t telling their kids to forgo uni. Uni is not the only route, but it is a path for many people to continue their education, experience new places/people and potentially put themselves in a better position for their future.
Looks like the government’s finally catching on that not everyone needs a degree for a good life. Maybe if they put as much effort into fixing apprenticeships and job training, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
It mostly kids that should be doing trades doing something useless like humanities instead ending up as uber drivers with 60k debts
Whats the alternative? Many businesses do not want to train and hire young people, there’s not enough apprenticeships and entry level job around.
Uni is still a great way for many in struggling working class family to escape poverty. Especially those living in deprived towns with barely any jobs and other opportunities available.
As a white collar worker, I’d have been significantly better off financially doing an apprenticeship in my field rather than going to university, and my job is unrelated to my degree. However I don’t regret going to university at all
Friendly reminder to everyone, there are about 20 countries with higher rates of university attendance than the UK and in most of them there is a significant graduate wage premium. The problem is not university attendance, it is a weak job market and stagnating economy. The upper classes will continue to send their children to tertiary education while they convince yours to abandon it.
And post brexit if you want to move anywhere most of the time you need a degree to have the easiest chances..
The problem is there aren’t that many low skilled jobs out there these days.
Governments sold off all the industries that provided thousands of jobs.
Now we’re top weighted with people with degrees and end up over qualified.
This as been a problem soon after Blair started promoting University. Within a few years this situation became obvious, at the end of the 90s.
If everything needs a degree, nothing needs a degree
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My friend said if you want a job, go study economics/ banking and then make bank, when asked about supply and demand they said just shut up and get paid
I hate how higher education is seen as job factory. We should see it more about benefits of having a highly educated country and boosting critical thinking. Especially during elections
I also feel once in a career higher education opportunities can help job. Mechanic or builder with more higher mathematics or engineering degrees. Service and hospitality with better social studies or psychology degrees. More people in general understanding legal systems and contracts works etc
University is still absolutely the right path for medicine, law, engineering, science, research, parts of finance, teaching and many other professions. But pretending that every 18-year-old should take on a large student loan for any degree, at any institution, regardless of outcomes, is outdated….. remember people at uni 25 years ago, didnt have to pay tuition
Are we? I don’t think our graduate numbers are out of place compared to other developed nations… maybe I’m wrong but this sounds to me like another neo lib crap piece trying to intentionally entrench inequality.
This narrative is being pushed loads recently.
If you read the article, his evidence that too many young people go to university is that 10% of Neets have degrees, but given that 35-50% go to uni, doesn’t that show the opposite?
also lots of jobs that didn’t previously required a degree now do, (nursing, accounting etc) so obviously more people will go to university, yes it’s crap that it means needing student loans, but doesn’t make it a bad choice to go to uni.
Am I missing something, or is this just another way for politicians to shit on young people again?