What's your degree and what is your job?

Jenuall wrote:

lex-man wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:

lex-man wrote:It's one of those weird things, you go to school get told you need qualifications to succeed in life and then find out later that all the kids who dropped out at 16 are now plumbers and earning 40k a year. When you have three degrees and are struggling to get past 30K.

Not really the case though - the kids in school who dropped out and worked hard at their trade are certainly gonna be earning good money, but the folks who went to uni and did stupid strawberry floating degrees or spent their three or four years at uni out on the piss will then have trouble finding jobs at the end of it.

On the flip side, the kids who dropped out at sixteen and sat scratching their arse will be earning strawberry float all money, while the people who actually worked for their degree or studied a relevant subject will also probably be earning a good wage.

Not me though - I just kept going back and doing further degrees. Now I can’t get any more qualifications I don’t know what the strawberry float to do.

Edit: Also, to contextualise my original post in the thread, I work in a call centre but only to fund educational stuff; the cost of obtaining the PhD I just got awarded was about £15,000. I also teach uni students across two institutions and am currently applying for research and teaching roles around the country.

I'm didn't mean for my comment to be taken so literally, but I wanted to highlight that a lot of people, especially on here, seem to have done pretty well without degrees. When you're young, you kind of get pushed towards the academics while profitable career path like catering, plumbing, etc are largely ignored.

I definitely agree with the sentiment here - the idea that so many people should go to University is ridiculous and has led to an increase in pointless degrees or certainly degree programmes for things that would certainly work better as part of an apprenticeship or other more "hands-on" learning mechanism. Academia is definitely not the right route for everyone, but similarly I wouldn't want to suppress anyone's desire to want to push themselves on and learn everything they can to be an expert in their field, that is a great thing, I just don't think that it is necessary or the best approach for all vocations.

On the flip side whilst I know several people who work in "trades" - builders, plumbers etc. and they have all done well for themselves (to varying degrees) there are also certain drawbacks to those kinds of jobs that you may not see in the kind of work that graduates from "mainstream" courses tend to go into. A key one which is becoming an increasing topic of conversation with the friends I have who do this kind of work is the physical and demanding nature of it - there is a natural shelf life to being able to work as a builder or plumber, or at least as time goes on you need to become more limited in the kinds of jobs you take one.

One friend who works as a self employed plumber was recently discussing how he simply doesn't think his body can take the level of work any more and how it is as a combination of the work itself and the need to constantly be available - he feels like turning of his phone or saying no to someone is a direct loss of income (which it is effectively) and so he's pushing himself to keep doing the same amount or more each week, month and year. He's only in his 40's and yet is at a point where he either needs to find something else to do for the next 20+ years (not necessarily easy when you've spent the last 20 odd years working at that one activity) or accept that he will need to do less and therefore the second half of his career is going to see a steady decline in his income.

Green Gecko wrote:The reason schools push it is because they see it as a success metric. They only care about what kind of grades their alumni end up getting to make them look better.

Which is why it's worth looking into reports of employment rates out of schools and universities and what they actually do after graduating, although the response rates to those kinds of surveys is very low.

lex-man wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:

lex-man wrote:It's one of those weird things, you go to school get told you need qualifications to succeed in life and then find out later that all the kids who dropped out at 16 are now plumbers and earning 40k a year. When you have three degrees and are struggling to get past 30K.

Not really the case though - the kids in school who dropped out and worked hard at their trade are certainly gonna be earning good money, but the folks who went to uni and did stupid strawberry floating degrees or spent their three or four years at uni out on the piss will then have trouble finding jobs at the end of it.

On the flip side, the kids who dropped out at sixteen and sat scratching their arse will be earning strawberry float all money, while the people who actually worked for their degree or studied a relevant subject will also probably be earning a good wage.

Not me though - I just kept going back and doing further degrees. Now I can’t get any more qualifications I don’t know what the strawberry float to do.

Edit: Also, to contextualise my original post in the thread, I work in a call centre but only to fund educational stuff; the cost of obtaining the PhD I just got awarded was about £15,000. I also teach uni students across two institutions and am currently applying for research and teaching roles around the country.

I'm didn't mean for my comment to be taken so literally, but I wanted to highlight that a lot of people, especially on here, seem to have done pretty well without degrees. When you're young, you kind of get pushed towards the academics while profitable career path like catering, plumbing, etc are largely ignored.

Dowbocop wrote:BSc Physiology. I now take pictures of diabetic people's eyeballs and look for stuff that shouldn't be there. Not the best money (it's not a degree level job, it was City and Guilds until last year) but it's really interesting, and I feel well suited to it - one boss I used to work for said she needed to start hiring more men in their thirties because all the imaging equipment is controlled by a joystick with a big fire button so she doesn't have to train us

The vast majority of people I see are up for a bit of a laugh during the appointment which keeps the day flowing, and occasionally you pick up something really serious on the photos and can save someone's sight (and perhaps life - we do occasionally see things like ocular tumours and signs of systemic vascular disease which we can then act on). One of the most satisfying parts is when you get a patient in that has been bunking their appointments for years, then actually have a chat with them, find out that what has been keeping them away is something we can help with (be it lack of understanding of the test's importance, physical or mental health issues, that sort of thing), and get them back into having regular appointments.

Basically, like everyone I'd love to get paid more, but in terms of job satisfaction I'm very lucky.

Rapidly-Greying wrote:
I work as a fluffer for the male stars.

in a council old folks home