The Sprout

Degree Or Not Degree?

Posted by dgchampken from Cardiff - Published on 24/09/2009 at 00:00
3 comments » - Tagged as Education, Topical, Work & Training

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Words: DANNY CHAMPKEN

‘You need a proper education if you want to get anywhere in life.’ 

‘No-one will look twice at you if you haven’t got a degree, you know!’ 

‘You have to go to university if you want to make anything of yourself.’

Just a few examples of the day-to-day nuggets of advice I was offered a few years back when it came to making the decision to go to university or not. No doubt the college-leavers of 2009 will also currently be receiving a similar barrage of guidance from parents, teachers and older students alike. Oh yes, we can learn a lot from the more worldly-wise; those who have been there and done it all before. And even from those who haven’t, as it goes! It’s pretty clear that the most vehement of life-altering advice comes from those who wouldn’t want you to ‘make the same mistakes they did’. 

With 99% of the advice coming your way at this juncture being of the ‘your life will be nothing without university’ flavour, it’s perfectly reasonable to accept that this is the best path. That’s what I did, and happily so! But four years later, I can’t help but feel ever so slightly bitter that my university education hasn’t exactly opened the promised doors. 

After graduating in 2008 I applied for jobs here, there and everywhere simply to increase my salary and start working off some of my debts. I took the first job that I was offered, in an office where my best friend works. I even enjoyed the job for a while, owing to the fantastic group of people I was working with. But as time has gone on, people have moved on and I’m left resenting the position I took that is not even slightly related to my qualification. And it hasn’t provided anything near an opportunity to even start working off my debt. 

Here I am a year later, hating my job and constantly strapped for cash – I swear there was so much more money available to me while I was a student than there is now! I don’t deny that taking full advantage of those available funds is what has fuelled my current money troubles. I try to adopt a ‘you live, you learn’ attitude towards this situation, but it’s very difficult to be so blasé when you’re pinching the pennies every single month. I would advise anyone heading to university this year or next that all that wondrous money you are being offered has to be paid back sooner than you might think! And I’m not talking student loans here (I haven’t even started thinking about paying that off!). I’m talking about credit cards and interest-free overdrafts. They don’t stay interest-free for long, take my word for it!

I can’t help but question whether the pit of debt that I’m now sitting in as a result of higher education was actually worth it. I mean, I’m forever skint and I’m working in the same job as people who chose not to go to university. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t look down on my colleagues because they don’t have degrees, but I can’t help but feel that I could have gone down the same route and avoided all of this financial woe.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on the education system? I wouldn’t want to condemn it entirely because things obviously work out well for a large percentage of graduates. My question would be whether the trouble that I and many other graduates have had in finding suitable employment after leaving university is down to the industries we have chosen, or to the recession that we have unfortunately graduated into. Is it too easy to blame the recession? Perhaps. It does seem to be on the tips of everyone’s tongues these days. (Incidentally, I paid a pound for a litre carton of milk today! It’s scandalous. I blame the ‘credit crunch’.) But we can’t deny that the state of the economy and of employment figures in this country have had a catastrophic impact on graduate prospects.

But with Wales being the only part of the UK not to be suffering from rising unemployment during the recession, surely there is something else making it difficult for graduates to find positions within their chosen industries? My degree is in Media Communications and Film Studies; a topic I chose because it was the most interesting to me, and because I thought that it would open doors into a varied industry once I’d gained my qualification. For someone like me, who was unsure of exactly what career path I wanted to follow, it seemed the perfect option. Hindsight, however, is a wonderful thing, and I’ve since learned that employers do not see such a diverse topic as anything positive. The feedback I’ve received is that my degree is too broad, and not specific enough. 

It seems that if you have your heart set on a specific career, be it Doctoring or Engineering, then there are degrees available that will qualify you to do that. Degrees like mine, however, do not qualify you to 'do' anything in particular. So no matter how many jobs I’ve applied for that do suit the industry I was aiming for, no one wants to employ anyone without any hands on experience. The question there is how do you get that experience in the first place if no one will give it to you? It’s a vicious and difficult circle, and I would advise anyone looking to develop a career post-university to think long and hard about what prospects his or her subject will open up. And it’s always worth taking things into your own hands, gaining your own experience and getting your name out there while studying.

LINKS

Mail: Graduate Unemployment Set To Double

BBC: Wales Jobless Down A Second Month

Employment & Training Directory

Careers Wales

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