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My son is going to uni next year and he is going to do maths,was thinking of computer science but he visited a couple of well known tech firms and was told they prefer maths grads
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Replies: 51
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Sheila Ferguson
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Depends what your son is interested in, it's his life not yours. Can't go far wrong with maths or computing unless he wants to bake cakes or make dresses.
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Doesn't matter as long as he has a good time and gets p1ssed every night.
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Foinavon is right...
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A foreign language is good, because you get a chance to spend a year actually working and living abroad on your own, usually as a teacher. Broadens the mind in a way that just being a tourist never can.
Having said which, the seven other students on my German course at Sussex in the early '80s wasted the year by simply enrolling as exchange students at universities in German-speaking countries. |
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Viking Studies (available at the University College London)
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.... how to sell stationery
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as long as you've got an ology you should be fine in life.
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Is that you Maureen?
90. |
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Maffs a waste of time. These modern tills will work everything out for you.
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s.kenbo - used to deliver her (and Jacks) newspaper as a kid funnily enough (true story).
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and helped her place a bet in Ladbrokes on grand national day.
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Why did the Maths textbook look so sad?
Because it had so many problems! |
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sorry foinavon, but i got stoned just as often as i got pissed!
i went to university to avoid having to get a job. now they worry about what degree gives them the best long term career prospects before they even decide where to go, what a sad state of affairs. it sounds like you are all thinking about this seriously in which case where he studies is important too. i believe nowadays there are rankings so you can see which degree at which uni will give him the best chance of gaining meaningful employment. where is he thinking of going? |
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If it is cold, go and stand in the corner, because it is 90 degrees there.
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What do you get when you take the Sun and divide its circumference by its diameter?
Pi in the sky. |
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Numerate degrees like Maths and Physics etc can be useful as the skills learned can be useful in a lot of areas. People who do them may end up as computer programmers anyway. Or anactuary. Or even doing what the actual degree is anyway. Computer science will have an element of maths but not to the same level.
What matters is what he actually wants to do at the end of the day, he should do something that he wants to do at the end of the day. Degrees aren't always just one big pile of the same thing however. It's quite possible he may be able to attend a uni that gives him a joint computer science AND maths degree, best of both worlds, give that serious consideration. Or he could specialise in one of the degrees, but chose the optional courses in the other subject in the earlier years that aren't directly listed in the final degree, if the university allows. |
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Maths - he will be able to pull the wool over the eyes of almost every other scientist - so long as he can keep a straight face.
We drink our fill, we thirst for more. Eventually - in a bizarre parallel universe - he may be of some actual use. Unlikely though. |
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If he's interested in computers as a career and thinks maths will help, I'd suggest the joint degree.
But of course, is he actually good at maths, an actual maths degree will be a step up in gear. |
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I'm told a maths degree today is equivalent to an 0-level in 1968. I have no opinion either way.
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Maureen Lipman was great in the 'ology' TV ad, DW2E.
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Maths is a terrible degree to do it's far too hard plus too many hours. When you decide that you want to get up to studenty stuff and coast you need a nice degree with less work involved. Sociology is the one to go for. Plus maths has a very high ratio of boys to girls doing the course. Again Sociology has a much better ratio in this respect.
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maths, statistics, operations research students tend to have mental problems in my experience, still, a small price to pay, statistics one of the great disciplines, only do a mickey mouse science like biology if you want to shag and drink a lot, and the "social" sciences are obviously not science but they are more social.
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or you could take the money and years you would have blown on a degree and use it to do something useful.
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Philosophy is surprisingly good for subsequent employment. The main thing is to get a good degree from a "top" university.
The funny thing is that media studies also has very high graduate employment rates (although I guess that might be because they are all working at Mickey D's). |
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My son it aiming to do Physics at Manchester Uni if he gets the grades .
Maths and Physics are the hardest A levels by a country mile in my opinion and I am so proud that he is taking these challenges on rather than softer options. IT and maths have always been linked, the use of logic in both being the obvious reason. As an IT professional of over 3 decades I would highly recommend degrees that lead to careers in it . The modern world is underpinned by IT , jobs are plentiful and very well paid . |
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"Philosophy is surprisingly good for subsequent employment."
I'm sure the tech firms mentioned are crying out for it... When half the population are getting degrees and leaving with massive debt, just don't let him do something mickey mouse, which despite the fact this have been obvious for years, many are still doing, with the modern sense of entitlement. The world doesn't owe you a living especially if you've got a worthless qualification Don't let them end up like this! http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltalohGjbP1r25y9yo1_500.jpg I wouldn't do a straight maths degree myself though. |
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dentistry, 70k+a year ffs
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"Philosophy is surprisingly good for subsequent employment."
I'm sure the tech firms mentioned are crying out for it... From the LSE web site: The average starting salary of undergraduates from the Philosophy department in 2013/14 was £32,200 and for postgraduates £31,000. |
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If I had the brain for it I would do the maths course. A most satisfying subject.
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my feelings aswell dunlaying,i remember sitting in maths class 30 years ago and my teacher being given a rubix cube by a friend and him solving it by end of lesson,its the clarity of thought it seems to give the grads
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Maths degrees - Nothing else gives you that sense of intellectual superiority like being able to work out what number comes next in a sequence. Of course nothing else helps divorce lawyers as much as people with maths degrees.
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Train to become an Actuary (Financial Mathematics) .... that is a nice job to get into.
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Training for a job is something completely different from an education.
A proper education gives you the tools, experience and confidence to be able to train more readily and effectively for a job later on, then to do the job itself with greater flair and, way more importantly, to handle life outside of work with understanding and resilience. I enjoyed maths at school in the 1970s, and value it as an antidote to common sense and lack of thought. But once you'd got your A level, the S level syllabus just felt so esoteric with its endless permutations of what you could do with the square root of minus one. I mean, I understand the concept's applications in fields such as electronics, but that sort of specialization felt too much like being directed towards a career rather than being prepared for life. Which is why I studied a foreign language when it came to the degree. It offers you the key to a whole new world. |
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"From the LSE web site: The average starting salary of undergraduates from the Philosophy department in 2013/14 was £32,200 and for postgraduates £31,000."
I don't want to pick on Philosophy as a degree but I would say that firstly, they are pimping their own degree, and that secondly I'd imagine that is the salary of people who actually get a start in jobs, not everyone who graduates, there is a BIG difference. Like the difference between "average winnings of people who win on Betfair" vs "everyone on betfair". In my experience there was a massive difference between what the hype said people earn on graduation, and what they do, even if they get a job in their field. As I say though to the OP, there is no point setting youself up for a degree and a career you then hate. If he has an interest or even a passion in maths, fair enough. I have some interest but I think I'd have hated a degree 100% in it. If he however has an interest in IT and that's his career path, I'd say take a good CS related degree at a good uni, or say CS and Maths as I said earlier, or some other interesting hybrid. My other advice is that given everyone and his dog has a degree now, the choice of uni does matter, if he can get one with a good rep, take it. |
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"Training for a job is something completely different from an education.
A proper education gives you the tools, experience and confidence to be able to train more readily and effectively for a job later on, then to do the job itself with greater flair and, way more importantly, to handle life outside of work with understanding and resilience." I'd probably agree with this. It being a belief that the difference between a good degree and a vocational qualification in the same subject area is that the degree should be teaching you how to think (and in that area), the vocational is how to do a specific task. I'm not sure how much that might apply in 2016 when it might be more of a qualification treadmill. |
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Get a trade ,Half the country will have degrees in 15 years and owe fortunes to Boot ..
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U.A. 28 Nov 15 21:45
Maths degrees - Nothing else gives you that sense of intellectual superiority like being able to work out what number comes next in a sequence. Of course nothing else helps divorce lawyers as much as people with maths degrees.  Fair point, well put. Admit it, you've got a degree in Philosophy, haven't you?  |
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I got mine in Combined Science a fair while ago, and included in that I did Maths and Sociology (no philosophy) so make of that what you will. Of course I had no idea of what I wanted to do when I left university.
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