Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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So who is going to build those houses you are desperate for?
Who is going to fix your plumbing?
Who is going to make your coffee at the coffee house / cafe you frequent?
Who is going to cook and serve those dinners you go to with your overpaid clients?
Who is going to service your bike?
Who is going to work as cabin crew on your flight?
Who is going to collect your refuse?
Who is going to produce the food you want to eat?
Who is going to run the supermarket or other shop you buy stuff at?
There really is no need for a balanced economy to have 40+% of it's workforce with a degree.
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Course there is. You’re listing a tiny minority of jobs.
i get that you really value jobs that end up in children’s books, but there is a lot more out there if you look for it.
All you're really doing is noting down customer services type roles and the odd builder. Clue; your supermarket? There are thousands of highly educated people to make supermarkets work you know.
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A tiny minority of jobs?
What planet do you live on?
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Remember those jobs that were deemed essential during covid? If you are not doing one of those then how important is your job really?
The country would come to a standstill if all cleaners downed tools.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
They really wouldn't, else the cleaners would already be unionised and doing just that.
This sort of aged obsession with only jobs they can see with their own eyes.
It's ironic Dorset mentioned supermarkets - my sister and brother in law work in supermarkets, as well as a couple of close friends and they all absolutely needed degree level education to do their jobs. What on earth is it about the complexity and scale of a supermarket that makes people think they run on their own steam and it's exclusively shelf stackers.
Or the air-stewardess - as if you don't need a tonne of highly skilled people to design and maintain jet engines, or design plane and fuel logistics, or to run the airport etc.
Just stop and think for 5 minutes.
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One for the avocado thread, but a first isn't what it used to be!
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I am guessing your friends and relatives are not working on the checkout though? Of course supermarkets require people with degree level of education, but the majority of staff will be shop floor and working in roles where a degree is not a necessity.
I am not advocating against University education with the above, just highlighting that many millions of jobs in the UK do not really require it.
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I'm a bit negative about university degrees. Seems to me all a lot of people do is evidence to employers they have a brain and this doesn't feel like a very productive use of time to me.
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In my cohort (1980s), there were no Firsts at all, all 2:1s or 2:2s. Mind you, I was lazy too.
The only subject with lots of Firsts was maths.
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Which degree helps with supermarkets?
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Maths, Economics, Comms, Languages, MBAs, Real Estate, Psychology, Marketing, Food engineering/science, land economy, nutritional science, social geography etc.
Could add engineering too tbh.
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Let's face it, most of the highest paid and best educated people in the UK would be put on the Golgafrichan Ark Ship B.
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And then think about all the companies that supply the supermarket, the marketing agencies, the logistics specialists, the advertisers, the customer psychology consultants, the lorry providers, the warehouse deisgners and adminsitraters, the people designing the packaging, designing the crates in which they're delivered, etc etc.
And that's before you get to middle and back office functions. It's endless. And this is an example that's supposed to be largely degree free.
Once upon a time we had a load of money tellers, now we don't. etc. Menial stuff is not something to aim for. It's to get rid of wherever possible.
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The vast majority of people I know from university are not using what they learned in their degree to any great extent.
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I can see how elements of those degrees would be useful, but there is still a mountain of stuff at degree level that is highly unlikely to ever be used. For example, whilst supermarkets may value the statistical analysis someone learns in a maths degree, I doubt they use differentiation much.
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Well yes but I don't think there would be enough uptake for the "supermarket maths" degrees, right? What do you want, degrees for every specific aspect of every industry?
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If the Unis are struggling for income without foreign students then surely that just shows there's too many of them?
I would also suggest what the economy should require is skilled workers which isn't necessarily the same as educated workers (although it can obviously be both).
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People to study productive stuff rather than stuff to simply prove they have a brain.
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that last point is key
decades of automation, offshoring etc. have wiped out a lot of manual labour and low/medium skilled jobs, we just don't need as many as we used to
more recently, offshoring has taken out an increasing number of professional roles, and spreading use of 'ai' will likely accelerate the loss
i suspect the result is many peopling effectively 'giving up', stuck in low-paid roles, maybe requiring taxpayer subsidy through benefits, or retiring early, others ending up in roles that don't benefit from their expensive education
without enough new high-value jobs being created, even if gdp holds up, per capita suffers, wealth distribution becomes even more skewed
it's a long term problem, not just in the uk, don't see any real progress in reversing the trend
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
But they're the degrees people get snobby about and want to get rid of, as that's what the lesser known universities provide to stay competitive.
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I've been castigated on this forum for any attempt to evaluate how worthwhile any given degree is compared to any other.
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And therein lies the problem.
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Sorry I don't follow. What's the problem exactly?
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I think the example was more working on a till than running the business.
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A lot of those maintaining jet engines won't have a degree . They are still highly skilled though and will have done an apprenticeship plus NVQs.
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You have listed a minority of the roles involved. No one has suggested that we don't need some people with degrees, but it only needs to be a minority. More vocational skills are what are needed, modern apprenticeships and the like, not more and more people with degrees.
How many people with degrees do say Tesco (need to) employ relative to their entire workforce?
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A maths degree from Cambridge is considered far better than a business administration degree from [some new university], but the maths graduate is unlikely to learn anything that they will use in the rest of their life. They therefore spend three years proving they have a brain. Not very productive for the country in my view.
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I think your reasoning is flawed because almost all education will be out of date during our careers. The calibre of candidate therefore still matters. The size of the engine, if you like.
That's not to suggest that the fixation on Oxbridge as mark of supposed quality is healthy, but that's a separate issue.
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Of course an employer wants to employ the candidate with the best engine. I just don't think think it is a very efficient way to establish who the strongest candidates are.
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