How important are qualifications?

Indigo8

ViceVersa

Who is belittling education? I'm curious as to why you might think that.

Several people I have met over the years have done so.

Really? That's very sad. I would never even think of belittling anyone for wishing to educate themselves. I don't think education is ever wasted, but I do think that these days, there seems to be a move to push everyone into further education, when in reality, there are some for whom that may not be the best course of action.

I would like to see more apprenticeships, at all levels. My granddaughter is doing a degree apprenticeship, and her younger brother is interested, rather than racking up huge debt, but his school seem to be encouraging him to go to university. They don’t seem very interested in any other route.

I come from a family of highly educated individuals. What have I done with my MA.? Zilch.
The less said about that, the better.
But, the education my 3 children had, has given them lots of opportunities and financial security for their families.

I am one of those people who go to pieces in exams - I’ve failed every one I’ve taken, (although I did pass my 11+, I think at 10 I was too young to be scared). I had top marks throughout the year but just scraped a pass on the second or even third attempt at O levels & A levels, went to college, not university and so don’t have a degree. My last job, before retirement, required a degree, but I knew I could do it so I applied, quite honestly, and was given an interview. Luckily the interview board could see that I was capable of doing the job and gave it to me. I spent twelve years being very successful, only senior management knew ‘my secret’ but everyone was very happy with me.

Since everyone has to attend school until 16, it would be better if they got something out of it. I do think there are people with the attitude Indigo describes, more so now as over the last couple of decades a degree hasn't neccessarily meant a successful career in the way that it once did for most people.
Some parents maybe don't aspire for their children to do too well at school, especially if their peers tend not to, they don't want their children to be "different" & they don't believe education matters that much anyway. It would be a shame if they gave this attitude to their children as it's rather a waste of children's time & also makes teaching more difficult.

I agree that wanting half of all children to go to university was a dire mistake. It lead to drastic dumbing-down of courses and qualifications. It left countless young people with useless degrees and huge debts.
Because the available funds then had to be spread very thinly it cut the financial support for students and left academic institutions severely short of money so they have increasingly depended upon foreign students.
Many careers became degree-only and the students have to work part time to survive.
The only winners are the Student Loans companies.

Barleyfields

But your friends are educated MOnica. Very well educated in their professional sphere. They will have had to pass many exams (more than 5) in order to qualify. ‘Being educated’ doesn’t simply mean having a degree.

But the tendency nowadays is to judge whether someone is 'educated' or not, by when and at what level their formal education ended. This is why law, accountancy and other professions are now graduate only professions.

Professions not requiring a degree, however superfluous that may be, are down graded. I would like to see a return to the system where anyone can start professional training at different levels and without first spend 5-10 years getting A levels and a degree (building up a huge debt) before starting professional training. Not everyone can afford not to work for that long, or the debt.

But your friends are educated MOnica. Very well educated in their professional sphere. They will have had to pass many exams (more than 5) in order to qualify. ‘Being educated’ doesn’t simply mean having a degree.

Reverse the last 2 paragaphs when reading.

I think there is often a lot of misunderstanding about what the purpose of education is and what part it plays in later career success.

Time and again you will find some article about' how I left school at 16 and now I run my own business and am really rich'. as if to run a business( and be really rich) you needed a degree .

There is an element of this in the thread on whether we passed the 11 plus or not with people saying that despite failing the 11 plus they still went to university and as if you had to pass the 11 plus to get to university.

I blame a lot of this on Tony Blair. When I left school in 1961 (and went to university) there were many and various ways of getting into all the different professions. The basic education needed to become a solicitor or Chartered Accountant then was 3 O levels. Yo could enter at A level and degree level. The more qualifications you started with, the shorter your training and fewer the exams you took.

Tony Blair's obsession with getting 50% of all children to university (why? i could never work out) meant that accountancy and law all became graduate professions and the alternative routes were all blocked off.

In the days of maintenance grants and government paid fees. If a course was a degree course, degree courses qualified for this and non-degrees didn't, so more and more institutions made their courses into degrees.

I would like to see the university sector cut right back to teaching just academic subjects, as they used to, and the return of the polytechnics, offering a wide variety of different courses at different levels leading to entry to even the top professions like law. In other words back to the better fairer system we used to have.

There will always be jobs where a high knowledge level is required and a degree level eductaion is required, but it does not follow that they are the key for running a business or making a lot of money.

My solicitor friend has retired on a pension, well in excess of what I have ever earned. She has no degree, I have 2 degrees for work and one for pleasure. I was well paid and reached reasonable seniority, and have an occupational pension, but compare with her I am an also run. Does it matter?

My best friend at school, fed up with school at 16, left, did a secretarial course, and because she was really very clever and smart by 20 she was secretary to the Director of a big international company and more or less at the top of her career aspirations. She sat down and thought and took her handful of O levels to a solicitors and got a job as articled clerk, essentially as an apprentice. 6 years, and 5 exams later, she was a fully qualified solicitor as well trained as law graduate whose apprenticeship was much shorter. When it became possible for solicitors to become judges, she was seleccted to become a judge, and rose to the top of the profession

Education is never wasted. Those who decry it are usually those who didn't get very much of it, so regard those who did as lazy gits who preferred to sit around studying rather than get down to honest toil like them.

Barleyfields

I would think that only the uneducated would belittle education.

Well, the educated certainly won't, nobody spits into their own soup.

I would think that only the uneducated would belittle education.

ViceVersa

Who is belittling education? I'm curious as to why you might think that.

Several people I have met over the years have done so.

Once you are retired, qualifications are not impotent. Skills, personality, experience, values -all matter more. They matter hugely for working people too. For some jobs, qualifications are needed, of course.
I am not sure what the issue is. Who’s judging?

Who is belittling education? I'm curious as to why you might think that.