Half of UK university students think degree is poor value for money

Re:Half of UK university students think degree is poor value... by bobtail3 on Thursday June 24, 2021 @11:59AM (#27619495)

I think you make a good point, but your numbers seem way off. What countries are you aware of that even get close to 60-80% of completed college education? The list below shows the highest at 61% for Canada (between the ages of 35-44) [1]. But that list is also including things like community college, trade schools, and other forms of professional development. It seems to me that a much more accurate range is something like 25-40% for most developed countries.

I think what is really going on with degrees being a poor investment, is that most degrees don't actually teach valuable skills or they do and the students just don't actually put in the necessary work to achieve those skills. Instead treating it as a game of how to pass while putting in as little work as possible. That was at least my experience TAing computer science courses. Most students were just not mature enough to value the education that was being offered.

EDIT: A more generous interpretation to the students would be that they were simply jaded after a lack luster and uninspiring high school education plus a similar experience in probably many of the college classes they were taking.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...

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Re:Half of UK university students think degree is poor value... by uncomputation on Thursday June 24, 2021 @12:25PM (#27619875)

> students just don't actually put in the necessary work to achieve those skills

While obviously this does happen, I think degrees do teach valuable skills and many students put in obscene levels of work to learn the material, resulting in ever-increasing competition for basically every facet of the job market - from university admissions all the way through job interviews. To me the issue isn’t students not understanding the true value of their education (and who could blame them? How is a 20 year old to know why their professor planned things out the way he did or why they are not learning Python as the blogosphere insists?). The real issue is that - like the article said - the benefits of this extra work seem marginal. Either way you will be competing against hundreds for entry level software development jobs with the greatest discriminator being referrals and prior industry experience. Whether you put in 8 extra hours a week to truly understand Dijkstra doesn’t get you much in the way of an interview.

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Re:Half of UK university students think degree is poor value... by cosmodisk on Thursday June 24, 2021 @02:45PM (#27622115)

Yes, you are correct, I was quite far off with the numbers,not quite sure why I thought it was so high.

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