The applicant will essentially have the following:-

[NotAllThere]

When I was a hiring manager I really wasn't bothered about degrees. Sometimes though it was an HR requirement.

I knew an IT manager with a degree in botany. His real name was apt in more than one way - Mr Tulip.

In one organisation, my immediate boss had left school at 16 with a handful of O levels. At the time I worked for him, he was the youngest senior manager in a nationwide company. I believe some time after that he got an OU degree.

I did see one job advert that insisted applicants must have a degree from Oxford or Cambridge.

[barrydidit]

When I was a hiring manager I really wasn't bothered about degrees. Sometimes though it was an HR requirement.

I knew an IT manager with a degree in botany. His real name was apt in more than one way - Mr Tulip.

In one organisation, my immediate boss had left school at 16 with a handful of O levels. At the time I worked for him, he was the youngest senior manager in a nationwide company. I believe some time after that he got an OU degree.

I did see one job advert that insisted applicants must have a degree from Oxford or Cambridge.

Has that been autocorrected?

re Oxbridge - that was Brillo's advert for his butler.

[northernladyuk]

A degree in computer science or any other relevant subject

That's handy then. Something I did 25+ years ago is really relevant....

Sort of puts me off because it says what sort of place it is....

You'd think they'd make the Back-to-Work schemes more accessible.

[Dark Black]

A degree in computer science or any other relevant subject

That's handy then. Something I did 25+ years ago is really relevant....

Sort of puts me off because it says what sort of place it is....

Most of the people I've worked with have had degrees...

Most of the really good people have had degress in anything but Computer Science

[Bluenose]

I did see one job advert that insisted applicants must have a degree from Oxford or Cambridge.

Whenever i used to see the words "red brick university degree" stated in the job posting as a requirement I knew I had dodged a bullet.

[billybiro]

It is? If I could find candidates as good as me I'd hire them in a heartbeat....

But where would you find someone with such modesty and humility?

[billybiro]

To paraphrase, you've worked with several muppets that had degrees. There are plenty of those.

More generally than that....bollocks

In a lot of specialist areas (outside of code monkeying), there isn't a route in without a degree/higher degree anyway, so it's moot.

Nope. I've worked with many people. Some have had degrees, some haven't. Some of them have been muppets and some of those muppets have been the ones with degrees and some of them haven't.

However, of the people who I can genuinely look back on as someone who was truly excellent at what they did, the majority of those people have been the ones without a degree - hell, some of them didn't even have any formal education at all.

Perhaps related, but they've also mostly been the older folks. The ones who've been around for a longer time and have largely seen and done it all and arguably got to be as skilled as they are by application (ie. practice) of their trade rather than paper qualifications (i.e. theory).

They can also usually smell BS (of both the management and shiny-new-but-really-old-technology kind) from a mile away, and simply get the job done in the most efficient and robust way (i.e. stuff that gets implemented/fixed stays fixed), usually while those "educated" folks are still dotting the i's and crossing the t's on their TPS reports.

[pr1]

I don't have a degree. It's never held me back. A lot of adverts I see for full time roles normally stipulate a degree "x years of relevant commercial experience".

Same - no degree, never been mentioned. Stopped putting any education whatsoever on my CV years ago, too.

Nope. I've worked with many people. Some have had degrees, some haven't. Some of them have been muppets and some of those muppets have been the ones with degrees and some of them haven't.

However, of the people who I can genuinely look back on as someone who was truly excellent at what they did, the majority of those people have been the ones without a degree - hell, some of them didn't even have any formal education at all.

Perhaps related, but they've also mostly been the older folks. The ones who've been around for a longer time and have largely seen and done it all and arguably got to be as skilled as they are by application (ie. practice) of their trade rather than paper qualifications (i.e. theory).

They can also usually smell BS (of both the management and shiny-new-but-really-old-technology kind) from a mile away, and simply get the job done in the most efficient and robust way (i.e. stuff that gets implemented/fixed stays fixed), usually while those "educated" folks are still dotting the i's and crossing the t's on their TPS reports.

IME a degree is just a fast-track to get higher quicker, doesn't mean you're any better once you're there - so the "older folks" are probably on similar ground to their degree-holding peers, but they probably took longer to get there

I started contracting (in engineering) at 25, 3 years out of uni - I don't think I'd have got a single interview if I didn't have a good degree

[northernladuk]

Well the first post demonstrates that just having a degree doesn't mean your getting a decent contractor so we can put that argument to bed.

[No2politics]

IME a degree is just a fast-track to get higher quicker, doesn't mean you're any better once you're there - so the "older folks" are probably on similar ground to their degree-holding peers, but they probably took longer to get

I disagree. You can't get the same theoretical grounding in a stem subject on the job that you get from a three year degree. Granted if you decide to move to a completely unrelated area this doesn't really matter.