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[slapntickle]

Over 50,000 new graduates are in non-graduate jobs, including lollypop ladies, factory workers and hospital porters, new figures showed, as experts questioned the value of a university degree.

Non-professional roles included jobs as secretaries and clerks but close to 10,000 graduates were also involved in ‘elementary jobs’ including shelf fillers, security guards and farm workers six months after graduation.

The figures, by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, also revealed 13,900 new graduates are out of work.

In some subjects, like computer science, 10 per cent of newly graduates were unemployed - also a slight decrease from a year earlier

The data showed a slight decreased from a year earlier and it follows rising tuition fees paid by home students and even higher fees paid by international ones.

It also follows Government proposals to link the quality of teaching with the standing a university has in league tables and with the possibility of raising tuition fees.

Reacting to the numbers, Alan Smithers director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University: “Higher education has expanded very rapidly in recent years and while it may be providing good higher education it clearly isn’t linked closely with what the labour market is looking for.

“A number of students who will have invested in themselves heavily through tuition fees must be very disappointed that if they are able to get a job that is not a graduate one – it may be in a local fast food restaurant or a coffee bar.

"If they’ve taken applied degree in a subject like computer science and that does not lead directly to a job which seemingly is crying out for good graduates then there must be a question mark about the courses that they have followed.”

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation, said: “While university education still leads to professional employment for a majority of graduates, it is worrying that over one in four is not in a graduate job [six months] after graduation.

"We need to ensure that young people get much better information about the earnings and job opportunities linked to each degree course, and that the government expands the number of higher and degree apprenticeships. Universities should do more to prepare students for employment, and we need more paid internships recruited on merit.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/06/30/thousands-of-graduates-working-as-lollipop-ladies-factory-worker/

[scot47]

Do not expect success in life if you go for a BA in Arts or Social Sciences from a second-class university. It MAY be a stepping stone to further training. Chances are you will end up teaching or in Social Work. Or stacking shelves in a supermarket.

I escaped the shelf-stacking but spent large chunks of my adult life as a prisoner of the Moors.

[lugubregondola]

[scot47]

I rest my case.

[slapntickle]

[Hod]

Couldn't agree more.

Whilst "new" universities such as Hertfordshire University, Oxford Brookes or Manchester Metropolitan may offer some unique courses not available at their older counterparts, you'd have to be bonkers to argue more traditional subjects like Engineering or Geology are the same standard in both.

I just picked Electronics, for example. The UCAS score for entry to study this at Southampton is 497. At Hertfordshire, it's 295. No one will obtain a UCAS score of 497, which is likely to be three related A-Level grades As, and go on to study at Hertfordshire. Why is that? Because they've been bright enough so far to get three As. Why should they study alongside students with three Cs?

[Hod]

To add to this, I've had to take over a new role at work from a Cambridge graduate who's moving on and upward. I only know this person went to Cambridge because I checked, but they are above and beyond what most of us call very good. They're probably fifteen to twenty years younger than me and streets ahead in terms of IT and presentation skills. Also, these people don't mess about.

By luck, though, my degree subject has been in the top 5 for UK universities since before I graduated nearly two decades ago. For me, this helps do the business with such Oxbridge types. If I'd studied at some ex-poly, I'm not sure how I'd deal with them, and I'm sure the feeling would be mutual.

You (normally) only get one chance to study a 3- or 4-year undergraduate degree. If you choose second best, which costs the same bizarrely, you will pay for it for the rest of your working life.

[slapntickle]