From The Metro:
Just a third of students expect to find a ‘graduate level’ job after graduation, researchers said. ‘With a record number of students due to complete degrees in the coming weeks – and tens of thousands of last year’s graduates still looking for work, there is widespread concern on campus that competition for graduate jobs has never been fiercer,’ said Martin Birchall of High Fliers Research, which commissioned the study... This year’s graduates will also have average debts of about £17,900, up from an average of £11,600 in 2008.
From The FT:
Mr Darling claimed that Mr Laws's package would undermine a "fragile" recovery... The former chancellor also claimed that the scrapping of the child trust fund and a cut of 10,000 additional university places went far beyond his promise to curb "waste and inefficiency".
So we have a massive surfeit of students, who can't get the kind of job they'd hoped for, but who still end up with 'average debts of £17,900', and The Badger is complaining that the Lib-Cons didn't increase (let alone cut) the number of such people by ten thousand?
Thursday, 27 May 2010
Supply and demand
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19 comments:
I was talking to a girl yesterday for whom the scene is depressing. Bright, wants to work - no jobs, on the dole.
I hesitate to quote statistics on an expert's home ground, but there's an interesting coda to this argument in a BBC report last December.
'Graduates can expect to earn £100,000 more over their working life than those without a degree, says the chair of the review into university fees in England.
The figure given by Lord Browne is a quarter of what the government claimed was the graduate premium when tuition fees were raised to £3,000 per year.'
Still, Browne adds, 'graduates are more likely to be rewarded in other ways like living healthier lives, being in work and being less likely to smoke.'
As opposed to all those chain-smoking, alcoholic couch potatoes who didn't go to University, I suppose.
When I started work 20 years ago there were too many people doing liberal arts degrees like English or History. And most of the growth in graduates is in those subjects, not the things we need like Engineering or Comp Sci.
Back then, there were at least enough graduate trainee courses in companies that having such degrees got you something a bit better. Oh, and you didn't have any tuition fees. Raise the number of people doing courses, and the value goes down. Eventually, the option to go to work at 18 is more attractive.
Macheath,
The problem with numbers on degrees is that only part of it is causation and some of it is correlation. People who are smart, work hard and do well at school typically go to university. They then leave, and continue to be smart and work hard.
If they didn't go to university, they'd be smart and work hard.
The single thing that all the really successful people I know have in common is that they're smart and work hard (and got a bit lucky). Having a degree didn't make that much difference.
JH, yes it is depressing, different topic.
McH, as JT says, it's correlation as much as causation. If the uni degree itself boosted your earnings (irrelevant of ability), then lifetime gains would be competed away to be equivalent to the three years' earnings you lose when you go to uni instead of working.
And even ignoring that, the £100,000 is a meaningless figure - if you become a doctor then your lifetime earnings are millions of pounds higher than average; if you do a degree in fine art then your lifetime earnings are probably lower than if you started as a painter and decorator at 16.
Of course we have a surplus of "talent"
BANKSTER talent. That is how most of these surplus students have been trained.
Banks produce nothing and destroy the economy evidently. This is the service to cut first surely ? Financial service. Cameron will say this later today.
The question must be why this talent still cannot find economically productive work? To say they should be dumped is immoral. They have done nothing wrong. They could be highly productive if we started allowing them to do real work by abolishing tax on that work.
"Bright, wants to work - no jobs, on the dole."
Yes, i know a few of these people as well.
I sugest they get a job in a warehouse or whatever to tide them over, and they go all huffy puffy about it.
I wouldnt ever hire someone with such an attitude.
"BANKSTER talent. That is how most of these surplus students have been trained."
please, do tell me the numbers, You have those right?
"Banks produce nothing and destroy the economy evidently."
They produce vast amounts of tax money, money that dwarfs the cost of the bailout.
@Robin Smith: Banks produce nothing and destroy the economy evidently.
Robin, I'm assuming that you're taking the piss... If not, I'll ask you one simple question - "Ever tried running a business without a bank account"..?
@Pogo
No. Deadly serious. Banks deliver a money and credit service very well. They should receive their full reward for that. Just like any other business
But they are not like any other business evidently. They are fully monopolising money supply.
They steal unearned incomes as interest on money created from nothing. they must pay that all back or not take it in the first place.
I feel we should not steal. Do you disagree ?
Politics for the 21st century. Pay tax for what you take, not what you make.
@anonymous. Panorama the other night (ok the numbers may be skewed)
Saying that most degrees were for the FIRE economy
Finance
Insurance
Real Estate
Now there are no jobs. Not surprising. They are not needed. Surplus to the bank "service" banks are utterly useless parasites on the real economy. the real workers.
I say go and get a real job and start create real economic wealth like everyone else. And stop robbing us.
Do you actually have the numbers or not?
We could be talking about 5% or 50% of total degrees, context is everything.
"banks are utterly useless parasites on the real economy. the real workers."
Herp Derp Derp.
@anonyomous
Go listen to the show if you want them. They convinced me. Logical deduction there sufficed far more than deduction on apparently self evident and pre assumed theory here.
"Herp Derp Derp."
(:
I am at work (yea i know), i am not able to watch it. A quick google is all i can do, and i find no statistics on the numbers of degrees and breakdown of their type.
Do you have numbers or not, why are you being evasive?
How can you have logical deduction on "to many of X" without knowing the numbers of X.
something smells.
@Anonymous. You do not have a monopoly on being at work. Me too. (:
If you insist I will not only try to watch the film again but I'll find other data already seen elsewhere to reinforce it.
If I do that will you make the commitment and promise to change your mind? Can you do that?
Induction uses observed facts (seen above) to reach a general idea theory of something. That is usually my approach when I receive denial responses.
Most people tend to use deduction, unproven theory, no facts most of the time. Climate change and economics are classics. Facts are not important in both cases. Politics is paramount
So... Do you agree to my bargain ? It seems a fair one.
Here you go from 2009. Actually 9% are in FIRE though that would grow from the commercial sector too. Joint 2nd to health which is nice to hear. Something useful is where most grads are going.
All gloom for graduates?
"The High Fliers research showed that the crisis in the financial sector had immediately impacted on recruitment in that area - with graduate recruitment expected to halve this year. "
RS, OK, the downturn may have hit FIRE graduates hardest, so what?
My point was that there appear to be 'too many' students generally, i.e. for many of them, the extra income they can earn in future is less than the loss of three years' earnings while studying + cost of tuition fees.
The Badger is bound to say things like that as i) massively increasing the number of uni places was a NuLab idea and ii) the Opposition always opposes, no matter what.
The above massive increase in uni places was a whim of Blair's AFAICS, probably done for social engineering reasons.
Where do you get the 9% in FIRE from?
I see........
Arts, design, media, sport - 6.4%
Business & financial - 8.7%
Commerical, industustrial & public sector managers
Education - 6.8%
Health - 13.5%
Other clerical & secretarial -9.7%
Retail, catering, - 8.7%
IT - 3.7%
Engineering - 3.4%
I assume you get your FIRE 9% from the 8.7% degrees in Business AND financial, however FIRE is only part of what business and finance covers. You need to provide something to show how much of that 8.7% is FIRE.
"If I do that will you make the commitment and promise to change your mind?"
I don't actually have an opinion on this yet one way or another, because i havent seen the stats.
you're the one who has made up his mind here.
@Anonymous
Then commit! Go get your stats. That would seem courteous given I've already done a bit too. A "fair trade" no ?
@MW Fair enough. KISS. BTW I have an idea that shows your "breeding" theory as quit flawed. Interested?
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