Does it matter where you get your degree from? It appears not for much longer.....

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This is dubious. Electronic engineers are not common as muck. There is something else going on here if you had to take a retail job, and it's probably not Tony Blair's fault.

Agreed - but not having a degree can still result in you having more limited career/progression options much later in life. When I left school after getting 4 very good A-levels in the late 1980s I decided (much to my parent's horror) that I didn't want to go to university, and went into a banking job as part of a non-graduate 'accelerated training programme'. Fast forward 29 years and I'm a Product Owner in a big global Data Warehousing/Analytics company and am probably earning more and doing more interesting work than I would have done if I had gone and done a degree.

HOWEVER - I have been very lucky in achieving good progression within just two companies during my career. If I actually needed to go out into the job market and get interviews then my lack of a degree would not even get me on the shortlist for many companies, despite all my experience. I did look around, and applied for a couple of jobs a few years ago just to see how easy it might be to jump ship if necessary, and I didn't get to interview stage at some 'blue chip' employers (e.g. Bank of England, major Consulting firms) despite having highly relevant skills and experience - I'm pretty sure that my lack of degree played a large part in that.
 
I'm a Product Owner in a big global Data Warehousing/Analytics company [...] I did look around, and applied for a couple of jobs a few years ago just to see how easy it might be to jump ship if necessary, and I didn't get to interview stage at some 'blue chip' employers (e.g. Bank of England, major Consulting firms) despite having highly relevant skills and experience - I'm pretty sure that my lack of degree played a large part in that.

Why would you need to apply for jobs like that at this stage? I mean plenty of people will get culled from various recruitment portals for all sorts of random reasons. Surely as a product owner you shouldn't have too much trouble jumping ship to a rival or onto a client and any other roles you could get via a recruiter.

I think that's the main thing, just avoiding the recruitment portals - you'll probably be fine at plenty of blue chip firms given your experience.
 
Why would you need to apply for jobs like that at this stage? I mean plenty of people will get culled from various recruitment portals for all sorts of random reasons. Surely as a product owner you shouldn't have too much trouble jumping ship to a rival or onto a client and any other roles you could get via a recruiter.

I think that's the main thing, just avoiding the recruitment portals - you'll probably be fine at plenty of blue chip firms given your experience.

The time I was 'testing the waters' was a few years ago when I was in a front-line consulting role - primarily pre-sales but with a bit of implementation mixed in. You are probably correct that I could find a similar position to my current PO role elsewhere, however I stand by my assertion that not having a degree can still restrict your career choices and earning potential many years down the track - probably even more so nowadays when seemingly everyone has them.

To get the thread a little bit back on track - yes, certain employers (particularly public sector, where diversity targets are particularly visible) may choose to anonymise the university etc., however don't expect the broader market to do this. Degree 'quality' (whether real or perceived) still matters to most corporate employers.
 
It's an interesting move, the desire is clearly to stop elitism effecting recruitment (which I generally approve of), and it is true and graduates from select universities (particularly the Russell group) are deemed to be much higher calibre than others (whether that be justified or not). The problem is that employers need to an ability to differentiate between applicants, even in my day (long time ago lol) employers where losing trust in the reputation of universities as an indicator to your academic ability and where referring back to Alevels to differentiate (the FT used to be a classic example only recruiting those with AAB+ but placing no restrictions on university). It points towards a greater problem in society, that our younger generations and the 'left' dislike ranking / differentiation mechanisms ("its not the winning it's the taking part") where as business wants to recruit the most able to do the job.
 
Honestly - having dealt with engineering grads from top rated red bricks, polys (i'm one of those) and everything else...I can safely say the uni in question doesn't seem to matter all that much. What matters most is the candidate. I've had people with 1sts from Newcastle, Oxford, Leeds and ICL all pushed in to mediocrity by distance learning students.
What I have consistently found is Chinese students have excellent subject knowledge but honestly seem a bit...special...when it comes to things such as common sense.
 
Honestly - having dealt with engineering grads from top rated red bricks, polys (i'm one of those) and everything else...I can safely say the uni in question doesn't seem to matter all that much. What matters most is the candidate. I've had people with 1sts from Newcastle, Oxford, Leeds and ICL all pushed in to mediocrity by distance learning students.
What I have consistently found is Chinese students have excellent subject knowledge but honestly seem a bit...special...when it comes to things such as common sense.

Honestly having dealt with technology grads from top rated red bricks, polys and everything else.... I can safely say the uni in question makes a massive difference.
 
*bangs head on table*.

There is quite a bit of mediocrity in the civil service (I was a civil servant for a while, and worked with plenty of civil servants while in the private sector) already. This is not going to help.
 
Employers will still be able to tell who went to Oxbridge by the degree length and archaic degree names. :p

IBM seems to be going through a process of reducing the educational requirements for most roles. I guess this is just part of it.
 
The point of this is to put more emphasis on your actual skills and interview, because there is a bias in hiring when it comes to universities, something which everyone I know is guilty of.

No one is saying all universities are equal and that should show up in the recruitment process.

Generalising works because certain things can be more likely true than not. However, that's no comfort to the the person that gets caught in the net.
 
My dad did B(Eng.) electronic engineering in the 1970s. When he graduated, he was just 1 out of 20 people that got degrees. He was very much sought after and ended up in a career in engineering for a large UK defence company.

Then my parents told me in the 1990s that the country is crying out for electronic engineers. So I studied B(Eng.) electronic engineering as well, but because Tony Blair's gov't over-sold degrees, I ended up in a generation where 1 out of every 2 people had degrees. We're common as muck. End result is that the vast majority of us got irrelevant jobs in e.g. retail or in an office doing admin and all we have to show for it is a £20k student loan.

So the crux of this thread is: not only it's irrelevant which university you went to, but it's also irrelevant whether you actually have a degree at all!

i see this opinion toted a lot that because degrees are common they're less necessary.

sorry but i just can't see the logic, a levels and gcse's are common, so we don't need those right? while we're at it lets not bother with those ten a penny driving licences and see how we do climbing the career ladder
 
The point of this is to put more emphasis on your actual skills and interview, because there is a bias in hiring when it comes to universities, something which everyone I know is guilty of.

No one is saying all universities are equal and that should show up in the recruitment process.

Generalising works because certain things can be more likely true than not. However, that's no comfort to the the person that gets caught in the net.

This is a great point muon, unfortunately there's not a lot "skill" testing in interviews but there is a lot of "memory" testing, and generalising it is one of the biggest differences between the top tier universities grads and the others in interviews. There's two (related) observations I have when interviewing techs

[1] When you ask a wide range of tech graduates *how* to implement x using language y, they are similar in terms of capability.
[2] When you ask them *why* they chose to do it a particular way, there's quite a large difference between the top tier grads and the rest.

That translates into workplace when you need new approaches vs known ones (the amount of grads we have that will stop once google doesn't given them an answer is untrue). Part of it is that the top tier unis are more geared towards research (aka problem solving) and others towards teaching (how to apply the known).
 
Take into account too there is this thing called social media which they can find out everything from if they really wanted to.
It doesn't mean a thing its just a PR exercise to look unbiased.
In reality, they are going to hire who does best at the interview anyway. Which will most likely be some public school fag whipping boy?
Dont ban me for calling them a fag. Read before you get offended.
 
I'm surprised people are still asking for degrees these day considering they are two to a penny now and barely teach anything that's relevant in the real world.

Strange thing is even though UK is more educated these days I find people are more stupid but i guess that is in part due to the trash that is on TV these days and social media.
 
Take into account too there is this thing called social media which they can find out everything from if they really wanted to.

nope it isn't just the university that is absent but also their name and the other details listed in the OP... so it would be rather hard if not impossible to look up the people on social media if given a pile of CVs by HR that comply with the instructions

sure you might be able to after interviewing them (unless they're just walked in and introduced by their first name) but even then the possibility could be eliminated by having the interviewers report their feedback shortly after the interview, having interviews with more than one interviewer present or indeed having a HR representative present in the interview
 
The ever creeping social media thing freaks me out. I was asked for my Facebook details once at an interview, which is weird in itself, but I was then basically called a liar when I said I don't use it.
 
IBM seems to be going through a process of reducing the educational requirements for most roles. I guess this is just part of it.

It's not like higher standards in the past have helped them out. They're not exactly in freefall but I don't hear good things from people who work there.
 
The ever creeping social media thing freaks me out. I was asked for my Facebook details once at an interview, which is weird in itself, but I was then basically called a liar when I said I don't use it.

this is a worrying trend, i dislike the notion that it's somehow a character fault to not subscribe to that awful cesspit.
 
Being asked for Facebook details in an interview is a nice early red flag though, so they're doing you a favour.
 
My dad did B(Eng.) electronic engineering in the 1970s. When he graduated, he was just 1 out of 20 people that got degrees. He was very much sought after and ended up in a career in engineering for a large UK defence company.

Then my parents told me in the 1990s that the country is crying out for electronic engineers. So I studied B(Eng.) electronic engineering as well, but because Tony Blair's gov't over-sold degrees, I ended up in a generation where 1 out of every 2 people had degrees. We're common as muck. End result is that the vast majority of us got irrelevant jobs in e.g. retail or in an office doing admin and all we have to show for it is a £20k student loan.

So the crux of this thread is: not only it's irrelevant which university you went to, but it's also irrelevant whether you actually have a degree at all!

While I agree in part that it might have been oversold, it's worth mentioning that the armed forces are always looking for people with engineering degrees to become engineering officers.

Fair enough if thats not the path you wanted to take but even using that one example its clear that theres other options other than admin or retail for those with a degree.
 
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