{"id":49997,"date":"2025-07-09T00:05:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T00:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/49997\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T00:05:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T00:05:23","slug":"when-a-university-degree-wont-get-you-a-decent-job-or-home-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/49997\/","title":{"rendered":"When a university degree won\u2019t get you a decent job or home | Universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

The university degree was never a guaranteed ticket to a good career. I graduated from Cambridge about the same time as Gaby Hinsliff (We told young people that degrees were their ticket to a better life. It\u2019s become a great betrayal, 13 May<\/a>). Without middle-class connections, or \u201cprofessional\u201d work experience, I returned home after graduation to a neighbourhood counted among the 1% most deprived in England, in\u00a0a post-industrial northern city with a crumbling social infrastructure. I had \u00a330 to my name and took a job worse than the one I\u2019d had while at school in order to live.<\/p>\n

To get to London, where there was a greater range of jobs, I did non-graduate work for a few years, sofa-surfing to begin with. Like today\u2019s graduates, I had to do further study to get a decent job, and I was just shy of 40 when I managed to get a career job. I guess it is a better life in the end, as the alternative may well have been a cycle of bad jobs and\u00a0unemployment.<\/p>\n

Of course, this circuitous route to decent work and conditions means that I couldn\u2019t afford to live in London (I left), and won\u2019t ever earn enough for a middle-class home and a good pension.<\/p>\n

As always, jobs, housing, pensions and other social issues become a political problem when it\u00a0is deep enough to affect privileged white middle-class people in addition to those at the bottom of the pecking order who\u00a0were already affected.
Name and address supplied<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gaby Hinsliff writes of the increasingly disappointing prospects for new graduates. Thanks to the Blair-era policy of \u201ceveryone must go to university\u201d, we have a massive oversupply of young graduates in the UK. We also have a massive shortage of more practical skills \u2013 Angela Rayner\u2019s ambitious housebuilding programme<\/a> was scuppered before it even got off the ground because we do not have nearly enough tradespeople to build 1.5m homes.<\/p>\n

Yet the government has just announced its intention to allow only those with a degree to immigrate to Britain<\/a> as skilled workers. Astoundingly, they are going to import more graduates to compete with young British graduates for jobs, while banning the\u00a0people we need most \u2013 those who do the jobs that young British people can\u2019t or won\u2019t do. I\u2019m trying to think of a way this policy could be more stupid, but I\u2019m not succeeding.
Anne-Louise Crocker<\/strong>
Shoreham, Kent<\/p>\n

Gaby Hinsliff notes that many graduates of the class of 2024-25 may struggle to find appropriate employment. That is true, although those who do get jobs will get better salaries over time, albeit with student loans to pay off. Hinsliff also raises the issue of whether studying for a degree is worthwhile. It is an argument put forward by the culture-war right \u2013 namely, that graduates who can\u2019t get jobs become highly educated troublemakers.<\/p>\n

Indeed, while my first degree, nearly 50 years ago, did lead me into a professional job, it also taught me how to write a leaflet, organise a protest and speak at mass meetings. None of this was of course on the official curriculum. A reminder, and something Hinsliff misses, that there is such a thing as a liberal education, something beyond monetary value.
Keith Flett<\/strong>
Tottenham, London<\/p>\n

Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/strong>email<\/strong><\/a> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/strong>letters<\/strong><\/a> section.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The university degree was never a guaranteed ticket to a good career. I graduated from Cambridge about the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,420,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-49997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114820358363244159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}