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

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Boycey0211 said:
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.
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they're also always on the lookout for people to become officers in general, having an engineering degree or even having a degree doesn't necessarily help you - you still need to pass the same selection board... I'd suspect that if someone with a good degree has failed to get onto any grad schemes then the army officer selection board is probably not going to work out well for them either

edit - I'm out of date - it's not RCB/TCB any more...
 
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dowie said:
they're also always on the lookout for people to become officers in general, having an engineering degree or even having a degree doesn't necessarily help you - you still need to pass the same selection board... I'd suspect that if someone with a good degree has failed to get onto any grad schemes then the army officer selection board is probably not going to work out well for them either

edit - I'm out of date - it's not RCB/TCB any more...
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i dunno, I've seen some absolute ****ing idiots pass the selection process.
 
Dolph said:
I live in the real world, so I have to acknowledge facts like this. Degrees are not all equal, nor are experiences, nor are schools. To pretend otherwise is to put ideology over results.
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Presumably if you live in the real world you'll acknowledge that there is a bias among many for their alumni of their alma mater. Cambridge grads preferential hiring cambridge grads, Oxford hiring Oxford grads, Manchester, etc etc. The aim of this is presumably to try and diversify their employment pool from a select number of universities.

The interview should help separate the wheat from the chaff, no matter the university, and any special prerequisite can be specified in the adverts and checked by HR after a decision is made.

I also agree that there isn't as big a gap between accredited universities as some like to think, at least in my experience. Some specific universities may have courses that teach things of specific interest for certain employers that may mean they pick preferentially from those universities, but those courses can be taught at ex polys and Oxbridge alike.

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AndyT said:
All degrees are not equal and all universities are not equal. The better universities attract more students; the required grades to get into these are therefore higher, so the students are better. The university can then also attract the best teaching staff who are able to secure the better research grants for their departments.

If you are at university with a load of 2xA-levels-D-E-moon-faced-dunderheads you are less likely to receive a better education than a university that requires AAB minimum or whatever it is these days.

Doing group course work with motivated, intelligent peers is going to benefit you way more than working with slack fools who couldn't get the grades for somewhere decent. But then again, you must be a moon-faced-dunderhead yourself...

No doubt this will upset some sensitive folk, but it is a market economy and that applies to skills and human effort too.
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The "best" universities are usually the research intensive universities (Russell group etc). Those universities pride themselves on their research output and as such hire the rest researchers that teach "on the side". Just because someones a great researcher doesn't mean they're a great teacher, especially if they're hardly ever there to answer questions or are your research advisor.
 
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Caged said:
Being asked for Facebook details in an interview is a nice early red flag though, so they're doing you a favour.
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I agree completely and to be honest I should've just walked out of the interview the moment they questioned my not being on Facebook, but this was a huge multi-national corporation and household name and not some dodgy little one-store operation.
 
That institutes differ in degree quality does not imply that removing that information makes thing less meritocratic that would only be true if the difference in quality outweighs the bias in admissions. It is well known that admissions to top universities are heavily biased by social class and particularly private education. So this is not a trivially true conclusion.

Personally, I suspect that too much weight is traditionally given to institute but that giving zero weight will not only overcorrect for this but also tend to push selection to A level grades which are more biased by social class than degree classifications.
 
Dis86 said:
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.
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Made me chuckle. I've noticed this as well. Asian people are scary bright. Especially when it comes to numbers. However their social skills / common sense leaves a lot to be desired.

Their work ethic is second to none as a blanket statement.

Soundly surprise me if the vast majority of senior management/ exec staff are Asian (at least in the city) in 20/30 years time.
 
As if a government department doesn't have the ability to find out who Someone is, should they want to.... You know they could also read the attached info?

It's just lipservice to social mobility and equality.
 
Boycey0211 said:
i dunno, I've seen some absolute ****ing idiots pass the selection process.
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That is a fair point and no doubt true, but I've seen some absolute shockers on the grad scheme at my previous company - we had one girl, a new junior consultant, who phoned her boss after 1 week in France, in tears, because she was home sick.
 
dowie said:
That is a fair point and no doubt true, but I've seen some absolute shockers on the grad scheme at my previous company - we had one girl, a new junior consultant, who phoned her boss after 1 week in France, in tears, because she was home sick.
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tbf had she been overseas before? some people just can't do the whole living abroad thing but ofc they aren't going to find out until they do it
 
adolf hamster said:
tbf had she been overseas before? some people just can't do the whole living abroad thing but ofc they aren't going to find out until they do it
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I'm pretty sure she'd been on holiday before, she wasn't going to be living abroad but rather she was going to have to travel a lot since that's what consultants do.
 
dowie said:
I'm pretty sure she'd been on holiday before, she wasn't going to be living abroad but rather she was going to have to travel a lot since that's what consultants do.
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tbf there is a difference between going on holiday and rocking up to work in a foreign country.

could just be typical early homesickness or maybe she's just not cut out for that line of work, either way it's understandable.
 
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