casemoney 29 Nov 15 02:30 
Get a trade ,Half the country will have degrees in 15 years and owe fortunes to Boot ..
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Such sh*t advice. I've a relative with a good trade, he hates it as even at middle age his knees are agony when he does it, not lazyness, just his body is now struggling. His maxmium income levelled out years ago.

Good advice is get the best qualifications you can in a good subject in an area you would be happy working in. I cannot put it better than that. Everyone has bad Mondays but there's a difference between 30 years of "oh well, it's not perfect" and "god I hate this, will I top myself this week?".

The important thing is to get a degreee in something useful. Not sociolajy and wimmins studies.

No it isn't. Or not necessarily.

The main thing is to get a first from a good university, because some employers only consider new graduates with firsts, and some only look at good universities (loosely defined as Oxbridge, maybe Russell Group, and wherever the person doing the recruiting studied).

Of course, if you have a definite career in mind, then you might need to do that subject -- medicine or electrical engineering, for instance, but aside from those and a few other special cases, it does not really matter. For instance, if you want to be a lawyer, you do not need to do a first degree in law.

So back to getting a first -- and the easiest way to do that is to study a subject you (a) enjoy, and (b) are good at.

If I was interviewing someone for a tech job and they had a 2:2 in say, lets go lateral, chemistry from a good Uni, or a 1st in sociology or some pointless piss from Oxford, it would be the chemist every time.

I think we're both agreed that the uni matters, but what I'm arguing for is that people should not only do something useful, but also something they enjoy. It is after all their life, you only live it once, it's better if you do something you enjoy. Actually ...if you want life stories and maths/engineering, read this: "Not Much of an Engineer" by Stanley Hooker. He was a geeky maths guy who did more to win WW2 than anyone in a trench, by greatly improving the Merlin, then had a lot to do with the Harrier.

If work was enjoyable would they pay you to do it?  Many with degrees end up in law or accounting, you know, a job.
Learning to think is fine, but if your thing is literature, archaeology, social studies, media then you may have painted yourself into a corner.

I can't imagine any form of employment that is not relentless misery, I really can't. And I'd add boredom, frustration and self-loathing to that list.

By the way, what's all this about having to get a First? In the year I graduated from the School of European Studies at Sussex there were 3 First-Class degrees, while 44 of us got 2:1s, 51 had 2:2s, and there were three Thirds and one Pass.

I'd always felt quite proud about that 2:1 until now.

Yes. Shows that you know how to have a good time, yet still retain the ability to spell your own name.