Respectable blue-collar jobs

[Tony Baloney]

Is the only purpose of education to get a job and career?

Its certainly how I looked at it at the time and how alot of you appear to look at it, but now I wish I had a different attitude at the time. In fact when the weans are a bit older Ive been thinking about doing another degree completely for the hell of it.

In general schools are there to coach kids to pass exams within the narrow confines of the national curriculum. There probably isn't the time any more to provide a proper rounded education unless you're a boarder at a top grammar school.

[manfromdelmonte]

Who wants to narrow down their life choices to becoming an accountant?

[StGallsGAA]

There's an NI Civil Service ICT Apprenticeship available now, applications close soon.

The NICS welcome applications from individuals no private sector employers would have over the door....

[take_yer_points]

Software development   medicine. And accountancy are the top 3. Wage earners from a degree level education

There are good alternatives however in higher level apprenticeships...learning on the job ..salary etc.

Companies like kainos in belfast. Pay their young people degree fees in software development.

There is a worldwide shortage of software developers
They can go anywhere with it

Kainos (and a few other software companies in Belfast I think) and UU are offering a part time degree route straight from school. Numbers are limited but huge savings for the student on the full time route. The student works 4 days a week in the company and gets a day release to go to UU for their studies. The PT route is 4 and a half years (includes summer study) as opposed to the 4 year FT route. It's a bit of a no brainer if you can get one of the places in the software company as they pay your fees (rather than the £4k a year for FT) and you've a decent salary for an 18 year old straight out of school.

The thing is, most 18 year olds who want to go to university want to go the FT route. The cost means nothing to them because they don't have to start paying it back for the forseeable future

[CiKe]

Not sure what the future holds for universities. Will be almost 20 years till mine are at that age but I'm really not sure it is worth the investment at all, particularly with platforms like Udacity for online learning  where companies are starting to create specific curriculums relative to what they are looking for in an employee because those coming from uni are ill-equipped.

Technologies like VR and AR will probably come into play where you can do these and traditional courses from comfort of your bedroom at fraction of the cost. You'd lose out on the social side of things this way which is important to an extent but not sure I'll feel like paying £10k a year or whatever the hell it may be so the kids can go and get pissed 3 times a week.

[screenexile]

Not sure what the future holds for universities. Will be almost 20 years till mine are at that age but I'm really not sure it is worth the investment at all, particularly with platforms like Udacity for online learning  where companies are starting to create specific curriculums relative to what they are looking for in an employee because those coming from uni are ill-equipped.

Technologies like VR and AR will probably come into play where you can do these and traditional courses from comfort of your bedroom at fraction of the cost. You'd lose out on the social side of things this way which is important to an extent but not sure I'll feel like paying £10k a year or whatever the hell it may be so the kids can go and get pissed 3 times a week.

My course was a joke... Management and Information Systems (There was also a different course Business Information Technology which was basically the same). Half wishy washy business studies and half wishy washy IT where we did a bit of VB programming and a few access databases!!

It was pushed really hard by the careers adviser in my school (13 from my school were in my Course and only 5 of us graduated) and it sounded computery and businessy so was presumed good but most of the class went on to be accountants and I'm in sales... .along with that the course was 9 hours a week for 3 years!!

If I were to send any of my kids to University it would be for a vocational course, physio, speech therapy, engineering but I think the days of 9 hour a week courses & generic business degrees will disappear soon enough because they prepare students for absolutely nothing!!

PS. I've just noticed my course isn't even offered in Queens anymore!!

[CiKe]

Not sure what the future holds for universities. Will be almost 20 years till mine are at that age but I'm really not sure it is worth the investment at all, particularly with platforms like Udacity for online learning  where companies are starting to create specific curriculums relative to what they are looking for in an employee because those coming from uni are ill-equipped.

Technologies like VR and AR will probably come into play where you can do these and traditional courses from comfort of your bedroom at fraction of the cost. You'd lose out on the social side of things this way which is important to an extent but not sure I'll feel like paying £10k a year or whatever the hell it may be so the kids can go and get pissed 3 times a week.

My course was a joke... Management and Information Systems (There was also a different course Business Information Technology which was basically the same). Half wishy washy business studies and half wishy washy IT where we did a bit of VB programming and a few access databases!!

It was pushed really hard by the careers adviser in my school (13 from my school were in my Course and only 5 of us graduated) and it sounded computery and businessy so was presumed good but most of the class went on to be accountants and I'm in sales... .along with that the course was 9 hours a week for 3 years!!

If I were to send any of my kids to University it would be for a vocational course, physio, speech therapy, engineering but I think the days of 9 hour a week courses & generic business degrees will disappear soon enough because they prepare students for absolutely nothing!!

PS. I've just noticed my course isn't even offered in Queens anymore!!

I did Business with Spanish. About 10-12 hours a week in DCU and then when in Madrid was up to about 25-30 hours a week (not sure the additional hours actually ended up teaching me any more but at least seemed to be taken a bit more seriously). Did two different internships and got a language out of it so all in all made me more employable and I can't complain. Better than an ordinary business only degree in my view but still don't think will be hugely beneficial to anyone in 20 years time (even learning languages while beneficial on personal level will probably be redundant with automated translation and interpretation).

Agree with you, think people these days need to be going into university knowing what they want to do and knowing there are jobs in that field at the end of it. With the current pace of technological change a lot of stuff like accountancy could well be redundant and God help anyone doing wishy washy stuff in 20 years.

[Smokin Joe]

Better than an ordinary business only degree in my view but still don't think will be hugely beneficial to anyone in 20 years time (even learning languages while beneficial on personal level will probably be redundant with automated translation and interpretation).

I'd strenuously disagree with that.  I work in an international business and having a second language would be hugely beneficial to me when I am negotiating / discussing with customers.
Getting the conversation translated really stunts the negotiations, hinders the process and you lose so much nuance when you can't converse directly with the customer.

[No wides]

Not sure what the future holds for universities. Will be almost 20 years till mine are at that age but I'm really not sure it is worth the investment at all, particularly with platforms like Udacity for online learning  where companies are starting to create specific curriculums relative to what they are looking for in an employee because those coming from uni are ill-equipped.

Technologies like VR and AR will probably come into play where you can do these and traditional courses from comfort of your bedroom at fraction of the cost. You'd lose out on the social side of things this way which is important to an extent but not sure I'll feel like paying £10k a year or whatever the hell it may be so the kids can go and get pissed 3 times a week.

Are they twinkles in your eye, you can start uni at 18!

[CiKe]

Better than an ordinary business only degree in my view but still don't think will be hugely beneficial to anyone in 20 years time (even learning languages while beneficial on personal level will probably be redundant with automated translation and interpretation).

I'd strenuously disagree with that.  I work in an international business and having a second language would be hugely beneficial to me when I am negotiating / discussing with customers.
Getting the conversation translated really stunts the negotiations, hinders the process and you lose so much nuance when you can't converse directly with the customer.

Right now I agree with you but in 20 years time i'd say it will almost be a seamless experience where I can speak English and a Chinese guy can understand me via some earpiece and vice versa. Being able to speak it would still be preferable but it won't be as advantageous as it is now

[RadioGAAGAA]

Software development   medicine. And accountancy are the top 3. Wage earners from a degree level education

Be wary of doing accountancy unless they are gonna be top 5% in their class and have routes to a partnership through relations. Maybe even then.

Accountancy is one of the jobs largely go the way of the dodo with ever improving software and automation.

[Smokin Joe]

Accountancy is one of the jobs largely go the way of the dodo with ever improving software and automation.

My experiences have taught me that accountancy tends mostly to being a step on the path to getting a commercial role in a company.  And I don't see software taking over the commercial / strategic roles.

Granted, there will be a handful of accountants who literally just crunch numbers all day who may be impacted.  But, speaking as someone whose qualification is accountancy, that would just be a small number of people who start life in the role.

[Lar Naparka]

Plenty of work is crap and if robots do it, then the human race will be better off. But other people, be they builders or hairdressers are artisans and these should be well respected careers.

University isn't for everybody. Software engineering, science, economics and the like are not for everybody, and the sooner we get that into our heads the better off we're going to be. Exposing all children to coding is all well and good, but we shouldn't expect everybody to want to go on to be a programmer. We still need people to build our houses, fix our cars, stack the shelves in the store, and serve us at the bar or cafe.  I work in a tech company in Silicon Valley, and some of the people in there that I have the most respect for are the ones that work in the cafeteria. They get up early and work their asses off, and they do good work. You can tell they take pride in it.

I once had a boss who bragged about taking his son with him in the car one day. He parked across the street from a mechanic's garage and forced the young fella to watch these men at work all day. The lesson he was trying to teach his son was that that kind of work was beneath him, and he had to stick in at college if he was going to avoid lowering himself to that level. Bit harsh in my opinion. I once worked in a machine shop one summer and enjoyed the work. (The ones I had to work with, not so much, but the work itself had its own job satisfaction.) My old boss' son turned out to be a bit of an asshole, and I'd say that little mechanic lesson was probably a factor.

Sad but true. Your value is measured in many quarters by the size of your bank account, not your contribution to the betterment of your community.

Slightly off topic, one school is alleged to have used a picture like this


and told the boys that this would be them if they went to University and told the girls that this would be them if they didn't go to university!

I like it!

[Eamonnca1]

You'd lose out on the social side of things this way which is important to an extent but not sure I'll feel like paying £10k a year or whatever the hell it may be so the kids can go and get pissed 3 times a week.

To be fair, there is a benefit to going to university for full time courses, especially if you go across the water and / or it's a reasonably diverse place. You get exposed to a lot of new ideas and new ways of thinking, so the social aspect is hugely important from the point of view of maturing as a person.

[Eamonnca1]

Better than an ordinary business only degree in my view but still don't think will be hugely beneficial to anyone in 20 years time (even learning languages while beneficial on personal level will probably be redundant with automated translation and interpretation).

If you can speak a language like Spanish fluently then it opens up a huge swathe of the world to you. Instead of working in the Anglosphere you have the option of moving to Spain or (most of) South America. Could be a while yet before some Babelfish device lets you go anywhere without learning the lingo.