£60 per day!

[Shimano105]

You believe that tulip? I can tell you for a fact that you are wrong.

[RichardCranium]

You believe that tulip? I can tell you for a fact that you are wrong.

<sigh> The radio programme More or Less investigates and tears to pieces the statistics as broadcast as 'news'. They investigated the claim that "graduates earn £100k more than non-graduates" and pulled it to bits. One of the things to come out was that a male arts graduate would be worse off than a male with the same A levels but no degree.

They also showed the average comes about because of industries such as IT, where, on average in the UK, a man getting an IT degree will earn £222,000 more during his career than a man with the same A levels that had not done a degree.

Propogated ignorance, such as you did, makes me cross. Please, listen to More or Less on Radio 4's Listen Again and learn something instead of making stuff up. You need the episode dated 28/08/2009.

[Diver]

Yorkshireman IV: My old dad used to say to me: "Money doesn't bring you happiness, son!"

Yorkshireman I: He was right!

Yorkshireman IV: Ay!

Yorkshireman I: I was happier then and I had nothing! We used to live in this tiny old tumble-down house with great big holes in the roof.

Yorkshireman II: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

Yorkshireman III: You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor!

Yorkshireman IV: Oh, we used to DREAM of living in a corridor! Would have been a palace to us! We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House, huh!

Yorkshireman I: Well, when I say "house", it was just a hole in the ground, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!

Yorkshireman II: We were EVICTED from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!

Yorkshireman III: You were lucky to have a lake! There were 15 of us living in a cardboard box in the middle of the road!

Yorkshireman IV: A cardboard box?

Yorkshireman III: Ay!

Yorkshireman IV: You were LUCKY! We lived for three months in a newspaper-lined septic tank! We used to have to get up every morning, at six o'clock and clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

Yorkshireman II: Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hours a day at mill, for twopence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle... IF we were lucky!

Yorkshireman III: Well, of course, we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the cardboard box in the middle of the night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing cold gravel, work twenty-four hours a day at mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our dad would slice us in two with a breadknife!

Yorkshireman I: Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay mill-owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!

Yorkshireman IV: Oh, ay. And you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!

All: No, no they won't!

[Shimano105]

I don't need to listen to this tosh my friend as I have continually earned the same or more than graduates in my profession. Depsite struggling during this recession I have only been benched for 5 weeks around May, for example.

Previously I only struggled when my skills went stale. After reskilling I was an invoicing machine once more.

The only people that have earned more than me are those in investment banking and with specialised skills e.g. SAP.

Never has my rate (or anyone elses as far as I know) been based upon a paper qualification that gets you to the same stage as a school leaver.

You sound deluded.

[nomadd]

Never has my rate (or anyone elses as far as I know) been based upon a paper qualification that gets you to the same stage as a school leaver.

Well, Jasper Carrot always claimed that "I left school with O-Levels in Maths and Art, so my first job was painting computers..."

Nomadd

[RichardCranium]

I don't need to listen to this tosh my friend

You sound deluded.

Troll.

[TinTrump]

Never has my rate (or anyone elses as far as I know) been based upon a paper qualification that gets you to the same stage as a school leaver.

You sound deluded.

You sound like you have a chip on your shoulder.

RC is pointing you at a programme that should make interesting listening.

[Bagpuss]

<sigh> The radio programme More or Less investigates and tears to pieces the statistics as broadcast as 'news'. They investigated the claim that "graduates earn £100k more than non-graduates" and pulled it to bits. One of the things to come out was that a male arts graduate would be worse off than a male with the same A levels but no degree.

They also showed the average comes about because of industries such as IT, where, on average in the UK, a man getting an IT degree will earn £222,000 more during his career than a man with the same A levels that had not done a degree.

Propogated ignorance, such as you did, makes me cross. Please, listen to More or Less on Radio 4's Listen Again and learn something instead of making stuff up. You need the episode dated 28/08/2009.

I'm always suspicious when people use the word Average in connection to Salary. Are we talking Mean, Median or Modal Salary? Because the usual Average quoted is the Mean, yet distributions of salaries are often slewed which makes the Mean a poor and misleading descriptive statistic

[RichardCranium]

I'm always suspicious when people use the word Average in connection to Salary. Are we talking Mean, Median or Modal Salary? Because the usual Average quoted is the Mean, yet distributions of salaries are often slewed which makes the Mean a poor and misleading descriptive statistic

It is invariably the mean as most people are unaware of any other.

In this context, it certainly won't be modal; that would be silly. The difference between the mean and the median makes for interesting discussions but is unhelpful.

The topic is "How much better off, on average, are you by getting a degree?"

The mean average is the one that needs to be used to answer that question.

HTH

(Next to come are the objections regarding inflation projection and predicted retirement age.)

[jim2406]

FWIW I am glad I did a Computing Science degree at a good uni.

It has actually opened a couple of unexpected doors to me several years after graduating, since I stayed in touch with some staff members who are experts in their fields.

In the main it hasn't made much of a difference to employment salary or rate.

But, I learned some interesting stuff, had a very enjoyable 3 years, and made lots of great friends.

And , if I ever wanted to retrain to another profession, I imagine having a 2:1 would make that a lot easier.

So doing a degree gets my thumbs up :-)