h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

re: careers

Many People need to try different studies and jobs until they finally take a decision about a career path or about having a no-too-shity job that allows them pay the bills and have a life ( to have precious free time) after work. This last thing is as respectful as those who want to be eminent professionals and get first marks and who have it very clear since they start uni.

Lets keep the axe away from anything related to studies,please. To have doubts about what to do is also healthy, and in many cases, it brings enriching experiences. It´s not about being "happy with second best"

Next time we need to build a nuclear power station (and we'll be needing a few soon),how many Philosophers will we need? Do Psychologists have the transferable skills necessary to design the cooling system?

Management and business degrees have been consistently in the top ten since the sixties. Makes you wonder what was going on when we're told repeatedly that it's bad management that's at the root of all the industrial unrest we've had.

I think it was SoRB who said it best - An engineering degree means you stand upon a rock of knowledge that is applicable anywhere at any time. The same goes for physics and medicine and chemistry and anything that uses facts and formulae. As for the others, the philosophers, the psychologists and sociologists and meedja students - they stand on sands of shifting opinion.

We need engineers and cutting edge research scientists if the UK is to generate jobs that justify high wages. The menial and the unskilled jobs will always go to the low wage economies. We should prioritise education to what benefits the country. Let the State pay for the hard subjects - lavishly. Let these students be spared nothing.

But the soft subjects? Ptchah! Indulgences that society neither needs nor desires. Let anybody wanting to "study" these things pay for it themselves.

"Indulgences that society neither needs nor desires."

As decided by you? 'cos it certainly looks like "society" decided otherwise to me. And frankly I'm glad. Your vision of life in which the study of meaning, ethics, beauty, human nature and society has no place is a bleak one.

HonestIago - see you've updated you Personal Space a bit.
Some people just beg to be attacked. They then invite you to give them both barrels with statements like:-
< I know this subject far better than most and certainly better than you: why not just concede that you're wrong, move on and stop attacking me personally instead of my arguments? >
As a would be careers advisor you should really be more careful.
For the record - Two sons both twice as old as you who hold down responsible jobs, one has a first class honours degree in Physics from Oxford, the other a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering from Leeds. Personally I was involved with the recruitment, selection and training of new starters and graduates as part of my job. I was expected to give my time freely to the local educational establishments, 'passing on' careers advice in my specialisation. Some young men I actually advised and subsequently recruited and trained.
You should really should be more careful my boy.

Beatrice - BSBB is Bull Shit Baffles Brains.
Some people are very good at it. Others try to base a career on it.

Of course we need people to take vocational degrees like engineering and medicine. But you'll probably find that most people with science degrees don't work in science....

It's all about transferable skills. My first degree was in English Literature and Philosophy - both subjects that most assuredly do not "stand on sands of shifting opinion". Both go back as far as civilisation itself. I use the skills I developed every single working day - the ability to analyse in a systematic way, to argue, to think, to communicate, to create and innovate. Anyone who thinks philosophy is a 'soft' subject should try reading Kant or Sartre. One key transferable skill that comes from studying the social sciences or the humanities is the ability to write at length, whereas one common criticism (unfair in many cases, fair in some), is that science graduates struggle to write reports.

The fact is that most 18 year olds don't really know what they want to do. They're only 18. Many of those who do will still be carrying childhood ambitions, which may or may not turn out to be realistic in the cold light of early adult experience. It's much better for them to choose a subject that they can commit to and enjoy than to choose something that doesn't suit. It's much easier to pick up the skills doing a subject that motivates and inspires than one that doesn't, and then see what the options are. Students do a phenomenal amount of growing up between 18 and 21, to the extent that most are practically different people when they finish their degrees. That's the time at which they're more equipped to make career decisions. It's much better for those who aren't sure at 18 to be able to take a course that interests them and that gives them useful skills, and then to postpone career decisions until later.

Further, although we need more engineers and scientists, we don't need *everyone* to be one. There are plenty of jobs that aren't in engineering, but which nevertheless require a graduate skills package. Why is an engineering degree better than any other for, say, middle management in a multinational, or a regional sales manager post, in marketing, in procurement, or teaching, or accountancy, or journalism, or running a company? It isn't.

AB - personal attacks and patronising comments add nothing to the debate.

>>Next time we need to build a nuclear power station (and we'll be needing a few soon),how many Philosophers will we need? Do Psychologists have the transferable skills necessary to design the cooling system?<<

How many jobs are there building nuclear power plants? Why would someone take a degree that leads them down such a narrow path?

>> An engineering degree means you stand upon a rock of knowledge that is applicable anywhere at any time. The same goes for physics and medicine and chemistry and anything that uses facts and formulae. As for the others, the philosophers, the psychologists and sociologists and meedja students - they stand on sands of shifting opinion.<<

Me and SoRB had this little ding-dong already and then, as now, he's wrong. Just because he/you cannot see the value in a philosophy/psychology (why, incidentally, are you picking on psychology as a "bad" subject? Most psychology degrees given out are BScs and most psyc graduates go on to work in medicine-adjacent areas)/media studies degree does not mean it isn't there.

Ironically, in your dismissal of the less objective degrees, you've highlighted one of the biggest problems with those overly-focused on technical degrees, their lack of imagination and inability to think creatively.

Also, we don't live in an objective world, facts don't hold sway and you need someone who's happy negotiating the gray murk of the subjective.

In politics and especially philosophy there are no hard and fast answers, so a person has to make their own mind through their own researches, and argue for it passionately so that others will accept it. When it comes into conflict with another idea, the proposer has to work out if/which parts of the new theory is better and if/how the original idea can accommodate them.

That's negotiation and diplomacy, one of the cornerstones of being an adult and something that those who can only see black and white struggle with.

>>The menial and the unskilled jobs will always go to the low wage economies.<<

I'm guessing when you say 'unskilled' you mean 'not scientific' in which case I invite you to be a social worker, or a counsellor, or a copper. I invite you to cope with a 30 hour timetable in one of the bottom schools in the country. See how far science and engineering get you.


>>But the soft subjects? Ptchah! Indulgences that society neither needs nor desires.<<

You do not equal society. You're also dead wrong - you know how I know? Of the top 10 degrees, only 2 are scientific, with 2 more being technical. No-one is forcing people to choose a particular degree, they're doing them because they want to, they desire them. A clear majority of people in society want to do the subjects you so readily dismiss.

With your own evidence, I've demonstrated that you're wrong - not bad for a feeble-minded Phil/Pol grad, eh?

A final point to relate this back to the topic at hand: university funding is being hit savagely and it's not a new thing, all universities have been suffering budget cuts and redundancies. This recent round has just made things worse.

Ed the Bonobo has a great statistic: every pound spent on education raises GDP by 1000 pounds. Not education in the sciences, education full stop. Education is the biggest wealth multiplier there is.

Or, to put things another way, why on earth should we believe that humanity - human nature, human behaviour, human society, human history, and human institutions - are unworthy of study?

>>HonestIago - see you've updated you Personal Space a bit<<

Yep, thanks for poking me with a stick to get me to do it

>>As a would be careers advisor you should really be more careful.<<

Not would-be: current. I'm hoping to go back to university to get a post-graduate diploma in careers guidance but that's just so I can apply for jobs where my formal job title is careers adviser. I already do a fair bit of it as part of my general dogsbody role.

>>For the record - Two sons both twice as old as you who hold down responsible jobs, one has a first class honours degree in Physics from Oxford, the other a first class honours degree in Civil Engineering from Leeds.<<

And? They achieved those 20-odd years ago when there was far less competition, there weren't many people like me who could offer a high-quality degree from a good university and a lot of experience as well.

For the record, I was offered a place at Oxford to study pharmacy, but I turned it down. Never regretted that decision for a second.

>>Personally I was involved with the recruitment, selection and training of new starters and graduates as part of my job. I was expected to give my time freely to the local educational establishments, 'passing on' careers advice in my specialisation. Some young men I actually advised and subsequently recruited and trained.<<

Again, and? That's my job too. I've turned kids from college drop-outs into university graduates. A kid I worked with when I was 20 and who was on the brink of leaving education at 16 has recently completed an engineering degree. What, pray tell, does that have to do with anything?

>>You should really should be more careful my boy.<<

I'm neither a boy, nor yours. I take it from your attitude that you have no answer to how this relates to the topic at hand?

< AB - personal attacks and patronising comments add nothing to the debate. >
Let he who casts the first stone.

Otto - Not to sound too patronising. I've been talking, arguing, debating , thinking and lurking for years.
In the end don't you just long for action.


Wonderful to study but even more wonderful when the lessons are put into practice.

In such times as 'I want it yesterday, how about limited time 'life' contracts as a step forward?
Forget about Citizens Income, what about Citizens pension based on contribution, which need not be financial.
With your long term future and care care taken care you can live for today. Enjoy your education, work to the best of your ability and go for it. After the first leg of basic eduction, join the real world on, say a 10 year contract. Then if at first you don't succeed, try again. Quite possiblly the first contract should only be for 5 years and compulsory to cater for the slow starters and those who need a kick up the RRR's.

PS. I enjoyed the little episode between you and Pinniped.

Most posts are either patronising, sanctimonious, and at some time parsimonious. It takes all kinds to generate 'good' debate.

< I'm neither a boy, nor yours. I take it from your attitude that you have no answer to how this relates to the topic at hand? >

Otto - Some posts are provocative.
You castigate the wrong perpetrator and such thoughtless posts call for a response. There are those whose education needs to he honed by common sense and experience along with those who should be seen and not heard.

RE - Post 191 above along with:-


My informative years were the 40's, my sons' informative years were the 80's. Significant decades of challenge and competition.

>>My informative years were the 40's, my sons' informative years were the 80's. Significant decades of challenge and competition.<<

The 80s are 20-odd years ago, so that part is fair enough. Don't have exact figures, but the percentage of young people attending university in the 80s was much lower than today, somewhere in the low-20% range. Therefore significantly less competition than today.

A thought springs to mind Ancient Brit: you're retired now but you've had your productive years. Your generation created the world we currently live in so if it's so messed up, you've got to carry a significant responsibility for that: this is the world you wrought with your efforts.

Folk like me, Otto, Effers are either just starting, or currently in our most productive years. Like you I think the world I live in can be better: that's your inheritance, a flawed world, and I'm working to change it. I'm not complaining about something I created and now don't like, I'm talking about how things can be better and then I'm doing my best to ensure that happens.

>Don't have exact figures, but the percentage of young people attending university in the 80s was much lower than today, somewhere in the low-20% range. Therefore significantly less competition than today.<

Same (or similar) population of younger people with many fewer places available is equal to more competition for each place surely.

Sorry, I didn't express that very well: there were far fewer people applying to university in the 80s, therefore fewer graduates and less competition amongst graduates for jobs.

My point is that when there were fewer graduates their degree classification would be good enough to differentiate between them. That isn't the case now as you've got large numbers of graduates coming out with the higher classes of degrees and also graduates with good degrees *and* lots of work experience.

Simply having a good degree is no longer sufficient, having a lot of work experience is a bigger advantage than getting a First. It's a rare student who manages to have both.

Well I agree with that last point but I don't agree there's more competition for places now. It was actually extremely difficult to get to Uni back then. It doesn't strike me that that is true now although I've not been in a school for donkeys years but the standard of students I teach seems to indicate that.

There were far fewer places and fewer applicants back then so I think it's more tricky to compare and possibly not valid. It was a different world back then - and there were lots of polytechnics too back then catering for a different style of student. There were more students back then than statistics might include.

We tend now to take just about anyone who applies these days in my experience (and I am involved (or at least consulted) in ). Although I do teach/research a science subject and we have trouble recruiting now. It is certainly true to say that many of those doing so-called dodgy degrees have been steered by their schools in that direction as it is easier to get an A at A-level in say psychology than it is in physics and Schools are extremely concerned with their league-table placings.



Anyway, this is rather a digression I think.

Correction : You will that in my generation men of your age were dying y for the country not swanning around wondering what to do.
I was 16 with a reserved occupation and just missed active service,

Otto:

AB:
>

AB,
Researches on Humanities and Social Sciences carried out at universities and other places offer a reflexion on the big problems of countries and a constructive critic of current societies. They show the historical roots of today and the posibilities, challenges and horizons that a country has.
THat knowledge also helps to understand other cultures; tendencies and demographic changes; social inequalities; characteristics and limitations of educational, politic, economic… systems; the artistic, linguistic, cultural… heritage; norms and values; etc.

The practical thing of that: they orientate on strategies about public polices, for the benefit of all of us (which implies an ethical commitment)

More “lessons put into practice”:
Consider the role of that knowlegde along history, it has contributed to the consolidation of democratic systems and to the understanding of the economical, political and social life in many countries and societies. Understanding is the fist step if we want to change, advance… do something “productive” and efficient, in any field.
If we study HIstory or philosophy , we´ll appreciate that easily.
(on the other hand, we should consider the importance of philosophers on scientific knowledge along history, or the relationship between science and art )

There´s no knowledge that can be dismissed as useless. It´s absurd.

Orcus. It is by no means a digression it concerns a public service.
What you say echoes the view of many of older colleagues , some who were in education quite openly say their career was ruined by having to work with low grade students and of having to award a pass simply because a student had done the course. Those who were not in education had a similar complaint regarding the quality of the graduate coming out of the education establishments.
Universities were Universities not too long ago and students had to earn a place. The 'red bricks' had an entry examination with compulsory requirements in Maths, English and a foreign language. A University life was still enjoyed by most students.

Maria del Mar
Why on earth highlight me with you dissertation ?