Masters degrees

Five years?

Were you cut out for it?

I don't believe that you spent five years completing a masters degree and no one even mentioned in in your interviews.

At my Masters interview twenty years ago, the tutor sat down and said,

"I have to warn you, I realise i'm only going to get 2 or 3 good people a year. The rest aren't chosen for any ability but to provide a conducive learning environment for the chosen few".

That kind of honesty just would not exist in this day and age.

Were you one of the chosen few?

Yes, he just wanted to warn me. He was absolutely right, the standard of practical work (Fine art) submitted by my peers was absolute dogs**t. Irrespective, enjoyed the course immensely and learnt a great deal. Was it of any benefit in terms of a career?

Would I be posting on here right now if it were?

lol.

But i've got bad news for you. Teachers use this trick on all students. Make each kid feel special thinking he's the best for some reason. Gives the students that extra push. Your work was probably as dogsh1t as that of your peers

But, but, I demand to be special!

Yes I originally enrolled for two years but the thesis took me years to complete.
At job interviews afterwards I cant remember any of the places actually even asking me to provide a copy of the cerification.
Looking back at it, it was obvious then that most of my "original" work was cut and paste from certain references that I critiqued.
I would imagine there is software out there now that would fail my thesis because most of the 20,000 words werent actually mine !

detraveller ...you are 100% right about teachers today.
is that because of the system ?
are they all running around being positive about everything because the facts are its now a sh1t job ?

That would make them not positive

Not in any of the dozens of jobs I applied for - and several I got - did they ever ask to see a copy of my cycling proficiency test certificate.

I assume it was in Psychology.

What about that life saving cert down the swimming baths
Dive into the pool dressed in pyjamas
Fetch a rubber brick off the bottom
No one ever asked me if I had a life saving certificate

Yes, but was it top of your list of qualifications?

It`s not what you know but who you know.

Having a nice firm handshake helps at interviews.

Really

Any finger Movement advice AK ?  Or just a firm grip ?

The vast majority of qualifications one achieves over a lifetime appear to be totally worthless

Do they just keep trainers, teachers, tutors in jobs
Or
Are we the educated elite ?

I got my width and length badge for swimming at primary school.

Can't say it benefited me in my career.

Like to buy my  masters degrees in India for #7043 rupees ...

I always question the merits of qualifications based on remembering what more intelligent pioneers have found out.

They do gambling courses at Nottingham, don't they? I wonder if the tutors are all millionaires?

Interesting to know what the syllabus is like if anyone's been on the course.

If Mart could land a little nail hammering job there for a week then he'd absorb everything they know.

He'd be running the lectures on percentages and probabilities

End of the lecture he'd walk off with a nubile student on either arm.

Unless you are interested in the "science" of addiction, you would learn more on one of the old 6 week residential training courses that Korals etc used to run for their prospective shop managers.

Obviously no longer available due to EPOS - managers now only required to entice people to play in their free FOBT contests rather than to settle £10 ew double at 7/2 a fifth the odds with a 15p R4 and the 5/1 second (now at quarter the odds (because the 8 runner race had a last minute withdrawal!).

I spent 6 very happy weeks on the lash in Weston Super Mare in the early 80's learning the art of the filthy each way from a Korals trainer but every time you see one of those Nottingham lecturers giving an "expert" insight on the TV they seem to be representing the industry - so assume they are funded/sponsored by the industry.

masters degrees used to be a thing of beauty

now anybody can do it and they are just another bought qualification,
they should come with a wealth warning.

My first job after graduating, in 1985, involved translating patents, and required a minimum of a 2:1 degree in a foreign language (this was back when a 2:1 put you in the top 35% of graduates, rather than the bottom 35%, as now). A girl joined at the same time, with just a 2:2, but she simply said she had a 2:1 and assumed correctly that the employer wouldn't bother checking.

After three or four months it was clear she couldn't handle the work, so she was appointed office manager. The same salary, but a really cushy number.

That was definitely a lesson in the University of Life as far as I was concerned. I stuck the job a few months longer, but then West Tip won the Grand National and that was it for me as far as the world of work was concerned. Well, bar spending 1987 in another office, translating medical texts, following an unfortunate afternoon at Devon & Exeter.

Screaming - Translating patents also a requirement of a betting shop manager back in the 1980's when on relief in some of the less literate quarters!
Union Jack patent (bet favoured by all the real shreewdies (not!), 8 selection, each one looking like a squashed then smudged dead spider, no times, no meetings, sometimes the same selection in several boxes. Usually each way, sometimes each way equally divided.

Didn't matter how many languages you spoke, some patents just can't be translated!

^ obviously 9 selections.

8 plus Pat Eddery ridden banker in the middle (usually finished 4th) which made settling easier!

Got a degree in geology - never used it.
Got a PGCE in mathmatics ie qualified teacher - never used it.
I'm the most qualified barman you'll ever meet

I loved the logic behind the union jack patent. The punter's not going to want to look a mug by doing a straightforward union jack, where 5 of your 9 selections could win and not get a penny back. So instead he turns each treble into a patent and ends up betting seven times as much, just to prove what a shrewdie he is.

Yeah - you've got up early, bought your racing post, studied hard all morning and come up with just the 9 sure fire winners.

Now how should I stake that?

bookies didnt open until 10am pre fobt, so you had to buy your own paper

not much study to get 9 hosses

3 willie carson, 3 pat eddery ( stick them in a diagonal through the middle), and 3 cecil shorties



twas even more fun writing placepots for 7 different bank holiday meetings
on the same slip, ..,the settlers never liked that!

I suppose it's a bit of an arms race. Years ago not so many people went to uni and got a Batchelors, and an M* was for someone who wanted to specialise OR go to academia. Now everyone and their dog is doing a degree (often dumbed down and pointless) so to differentiate in the market and MSc is more appearling.
So now it's often the case that rather being a bolt on, the actual degree is a Masters from the outset.

If you do a degree in something useful and then work in that sector, they are of course very useful things.

you can buy them on line now,name your collage as well,and they are real,stolen certs that they fill your name in.and impossible to detect as unreal,because they are real,but they cost a few bob,but they will get you the job you want.
and if you want to impress your friends they will frame them for you to hang on the wall.

They are not just a cert of course, there is a paper trail that can be checked. Of course you can get made up crap worthless qualifications or qualifications from made up institutions, the G5 conspiracy nut threads are littered with "experts" with them.

Got one off Trumpton University.

I've always considered an M.Phil to be worth far more than than a M.Sc/A.

Many companies today would train their people themselves. However, to hire people they need to set out some criteria. ANd your swimming or first aid certificates aren't a good measure because its quite possible many smart people haven't got those. It is quite likely however that the smart ones went to college. The degrees today are just a way to shortlist candidates. There must have been a time when a bachelors degree was the only critera for a particular job. However, today every other person and his dog has bought his way to a bacherlors degree.

So what they do is set master as the requirement and that leaves out a lot of jackshet candidates. This means they have less shet to sort through to pick an idiot that they will train themselves for their job. That is sadly the truth for a lot of companies. Education is a business, especially in UK.

When I graduated (early 90s), looking at jobs in my field, virtually everything required an MSc.  It was an easy decision just to avoid the real world for another year especially when tuition fees were free and a lot of MScs had an industry grant attached so you even had something to live off.  Don't suppose that is the case any more

I got a job as a lecturer on a degree course over here at a "BUSINESS SCHOOL", in theinterview I was never asked aboutmy M A or asked for the cert.
The degree was awarded by a very prominent UK university.
At the end of each year there was a meeting to decide on grades.
All tutors were there.
The marks put down for my subject were not the marks I had given the students.
They were significantly higher ?
So everyone passed, the students were happy, the head ofthe school was happy, the tutors were happy the man from delmonte (the UK uni rep) was happy.
I left that day .....

I worked for 25 years as a HE lecturer at a college which ran courses in conjunction with two universities and I also lectured at a university. Qualifications were always checked before interviews and being appointed.

Being semester based there were two exam boards a year. I never hear of any tutor's marks being changed before an exam board. Marks given were occasionally moderated in an exam board but this was a clear and transparent process. For example if a tutor had been off ill for a while and a less experienced/competent tutor had stood in then there may have been a case for moderating marks upwardly.

The University of Edinburgh has a good guide to moderation:
https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development/learning-teaching/staff/assessment/moderation-guidance

My gripe wasn't with moderation but the seemingly yearly dumbing down of marking schemes. As the standard required to pass a module became lower this also meant that getting higher grades became easier hence the rise in 2.1 and 1st class degrees.

Mar 2, 2019 -- 12:54PM, irishone wrote:

I got a job as a lecturer on a degree course over here at a "BUSINESS SCHOOL", in theinterview I was never asked aboutmy M A or asked for the cert.The degree was awarded by a very prominent UK university.At the end of each year there was a meeting to decide on grades.All tutors were there.The marks put down for my subject were not the marks I had given the students.They were significantly higher ?So everyone passed, the students were happy, the head ofthe school was happy, the tutors were happy the man from delmonte (the UK uni rep) was happy.I left that day .....

When do you think this practice started?
Is it possible that when you were a student, or when you were at that age, students of that time were passing exams in a similar way?

well I think it had been going on for quite a while
certainly during celtic tiger years
the turnover of staff was horrendous
you would never know who was sitting in the
desk next to you in the staff room
the students didnt care as long as they ended up with that bit of paper
thinking about it now , the answer to your last question is yes.

Some great Masters debaters on this thread

When I graduated in the late 90's, a First was a relative rarity. You might see one or two awarded per year, some years none at all. When I went back to the same institution twenty years later some 75% of students on the course I had taken were now being awarded a First class degree.

But of course, it's not that standards have been dumbed down, rather the students are so much more capable these days.

And the great news is that the percentage of graduates receiving Firsts is not the only figure to have risen exponentially. The number of students themselves has risen almost as fast:

The CIPD said that in 1979 around 12% of young people in the UK were involved in higher education. This figure had risen fourfold to 48% by 2014-15, it added.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/oct/11/huge-increase-in-number-of-graduates-bad-for-uk-economy

Considering the growth in the UK's population over the same period, the actual numbers must have risen much more than four-fold

So, not only has the number of graduates more than quadrupled in 40 years, but the proportion of them receiving Firsts has also more than quadrupled over the same period. (There are no overall figures for forty years ago, though I can tell you that the proportion back then was just 3% in the School of European Studies at Sussex - i.e. modern languages, a "difficult" subject.) The earliest year for which we do have overall nationwide figures is 1994, when the proportion was 7%. Last year that figure had risen to 28%!

Conclusion: there are now more than 16 times as many supremely talented young people in the UK as there were 40 years ago. Who knew?

More than 16X supremely talented when you consider the ones without formal qualifications but display their stellar talent on BGT and similar shows.

Absolutely.

Neither Ashleigh nor Pudsey benefited from higher education. One of them has A levels though.