Useless degrees

has anyone else got a useless degree? what became of it?

ive got a 2:1 in broadcasting from falmouth uni, but ive found it to be completely useless in getting a job.

to be completely honest i took the course on a bit of a whim. i got a phone call on the day of my A level results and was asked if i was going to join the course, to which i obviosuly said yes. i hadnt planned to go to uni and didnt really care, but it was an opportunity to move out and get some free money, as well as all the fun that uni brings.

now ive finished and cant get a job for shit. i cant get a menial job becuase im overqualified and they all think im goiung to run off once i find an industry job, and i dont have enough experience to get anything in what im trained for. no one will hire me becuase i dont have any experiance, but i cant get that until someone employs me.

im one of those annoying statistics you read in the sun about how useless university is. but man was it a lot of fun!

I didn't get one at all and found it hard for a while with a lot of places saying they'd only take people with degrees (I've not got A levels either) eventually I got my foot in the door though and am now doing all right.

Stick at it and take the degree off the CV and see if it helps :)

I was in a similar situation when I graduated in 1991 with a BA in Philosophy. There was a recession on then too and finding a job was near impossible. A little bit of nepotism got me a job as a Goods Inwards Inspector at an Engineering company and the two guys I shared a Portakabin with in the yard used to make a great play every Thursday of scouring the local paper's jobs section, then turning to me and saying "bad luck Andy, no jobs for philosophers again!"

After 6 months of scraping around getting dead end jobs, I decided to go back to University and get qualified in something useful. I did a conversion course in Dundee in IT and have been working in the software industry ever since.

It might be worth considering doing something similar?

i'm probably going to get a Desmond in biochem, which may hinder me rather than help, how bout that eh?

Mine is worth absolutely nothing vocationally (2:2 in Sociology.)
When I started my current job, it could have in all seriousness been done by an 11 year old, yet the spec still wanted a graduate.

.

Work experience - be an office slave and work for free to get some experience, then make contacts, eventually you'll get a job.

Like Andy, I have a philosophy degree. I'm still waiting for somebody to come along and pay me to just think for them.

I studied Sculpture, got very disillusioned and quit at the end of my 2nd year (so in answer to your question - NO!). I now have a reasonable job after several years in the wilderness of banking. Chin up.

Also, I would edit your post and add capital letters etc before Platini sees it and deems you un-employable due to poor usage of the English language.

http://www.holytaco.com/2008/06/03/the-10-most-worthless-college-majors/

Im going of to do Computer Science in Sussex next year, so hopefully that'll get a good career going for me.

yeah, I agree with andy.

whilst you are young go get every qualification you can get your hands on, think about what you would really enjoy doing and do something towards that.

has anyone else got a useless degree? what became of it?

ive got a 2:1 in broadcasting from falmouth uni, but ive found it to be completely useless in getting a job.

now ive finished and cant get a job for shit. i cant get a menial job becuase im overqualified and they all think im goiung to run off once i find an industry job, and i dont have enough experience to get anything in what im trained for. no one will hire me becuase i dont have any experiance, but i cant get that until someone employs me.

You should do an internship for a few months in whatever it is you want to do (if you can afford it, that is).

I have an English degree. I'm sure a lot of people manage to make something of that, but I haven't. Journalism would be the thing that seems natural for me, but that's one of those industries where you have to do loads of stuff for free because every other bugger will undercut you to get the experience everyone so desperately needs.

Why don't you get an entry level job at the BBC or Channel 4 or something? Researching? Or being a runner?

No jobs for philosophers again

Haha andyp.

Philosophy and why it wont get you a job:

This isn’t ancient Greece: No one is going to pay you money, or allow you to sodomize their attractive son, in exchange for your knowledge of existence. Never has there been an employer who’s said “Man, we’re having all kinds of problems, I wish we had someone on our team who could reference and draw conclusions from the story of Siddhartha that would pull up our fourth quarter numbers.” I took many philosophy classes and it involved reading and smoking a shit pile of weed. You don’t need to pay 20,000 dollars a year to do that. All you need is twenty dollars and a library card.

Maybe but it did mean 6 hours of lectures and tutorials a week. :)

No degree is useless.

It may not be immediately applicable, and it may not even be relevant to the career/job you end up with.

But no degree is useless.

When we hire, we want to see that someone has the ability to learn, to apply themselves, and to go through a concerted effort over a long period of time rather than just on a single working day. It's the difference between someone who works in a coffee shop and someone capable of dreaming up a whole new way of working and putting it into practise over years. When we get a stack of CV's, the first thing we do to filter them to a manageable level is just to say: Chuck out those without degrees. And then we have a third less to go through.

Whilst degree filtering remains one of the most widely used methods to manage recruitment, any degree... even one in hamster droppings... will be valuable. You may not think it is, but it is.

Additionally, even if you start at the bottom and work up (as I have done)... you hit a glass ceiling. There is a level at which any further promotions are difficult without a degree.

So even though you think it's useless... it's not.

I generally think better of people who studied something that they were interested in, over people who studied just because they thought a paycheck lay at the end of their path. I'd rather get a philosopher who cared about philosophy than a computer science major who didn't give a rats arse about it (because the philosopher would care about anything that they do, and someone who cares for their job will do it better than someone else who might be more applicable but doesn't give a rats arse).

Why don't you get an entry level job at the BBC or Channel 4 or something? Researching? Or being a runner?

this is a good idea, helps if you know people.

I have two old friends that started out as production runners, they lived in shitty flats and fetched coffee for wankers, it paid off as they are both very successful in the industry and millionaires (if that's important to you)

although having a degree and rich parents is not likely to be any hindrance

I'd rather get a philosopher who cared about philosophy than a computer science major who didn't give a rats arse about it

Not sure if that's directed at me, but I would love a degree in computing, and its actually something I've been enjoying since I was young. I would sill be doing computer science even if it did pay shit, because really, nowadays its the only thing I actually enjoy doing and the only thing I enjoy learning.

Sociology 2:2 and post graduate Drama

How on earth do I put food on the table?

Work experience - be an office slave and work for free to get some experience, then make contacts, eventually you'll get a job.

and how are you eating and renting and whatnot?

Note to self, don't send CV to VB

I got a First in Reggae and Ganja Studies at Runcorn University. Things have never looked better.

Sociology 2:2 and post graduate Drama?

I thought sociology was a good degree to get for service communities, or in the government, and definitely insurance work.

Dunno bout Drama though.

Sociology 2:2 and post graduate Drama

How on earth do I put food on the table?

Write a bitingly political, yet highly successful, West End musical about the state of the UK today.

work for free or do an internship. It seems the only way to get a job in media stuff nowdays. Worked for me.