Sorry, my mistake

There's a lot been said in this thread, and when someone posts something bad about the UK others have said 'it's the same everywhere'. Now someone else puts up a link that says something good about the UK, and there are posts that seem to say it's as bad as everywhere else. You joined in at a point where a new survey has shown a fall in crime in the UK to say there's crime in Australia too - I took it the wrong way, and that's my mistake - it was obviously just coincidence

I must say it's not that bad specially when you are looking for a job? I am working in IT and my OH is a commercial accountant working with SAP looking for work part time. We are predominantly looking at London, which is where all the work seems to be, but would move anywhere south of Manchester due to some reasons.

Hey, no worries. Just read some of the more recent posts and get what you mean. Can become a bit of a kids playground at times

Thanks munch

Yes, the standard non-response by some people to things perceived to be negative or bad about the UK.

I've actually offered much less opinion on this thread than some posters like to suggest, and have mostly provided links to qualified stats and articles to indicate the state of the UK. Those links are probably mostly perceived to be negative because there needed to be a balance in this thread as everything is certainly not ok as some people like to think.

Where I have provided opinion, a couple of things I have said are:

• there's no definitive yes or no answer, and is dependent on many factors.
• it should eventually be sorted out, the UK has had relatively more debt in the past - a lot more at certain points in history.

dunroving also had something interesting to say on future improvement in the economy/job market: A good summary of the opinions I have actually offered is something I said much earlier in this thread: "there's no definitive yes or no answer to the UK being "that bad", however there's probably more negatives than positives on the spectrum at the moment but things will get better".

The UK is producing far to many graduates, particularly those with non profession related degrees, it all seems to be that people feel a need to get a degree in order to get on in life, but getting experience and qualifications in many of the professions do not need a degree, things like the construction industry, jobs previously classed as 'blue collar'. I realise that a lot of this is due to Universities protecting their own existence by offering more and more courses, but some of them are quite ridiculous.
There's a list of some of them here, not all UK, but many are.

http://www.toptenz.net/to-10-useless...es-degrees.php

where would you use a degree in David Beckham studies? FFS

+1

On the OP

In general terms it can be debated to death & be extremely opinionated IMO

In personal terms living in the UK (in your own little world) is a different story

The thing is that is the same everywhere, worthless degrees for professional students.

Yes I think it's worse here.

No, impossible, its worse in the UK for everything, they said so in the Daily Mail.

I hosted a visiting scholar from Portugal this week. We discussed the way academia is going in general and both agreed that universities seem to be self-perpetuating themselves both in terms of lowering of standards and offering fluff degree subjects. It seems the masters degree is becoming the new undergraduate degree, so to speak. Interesting for me to hear the same pattern is being replicated in Portugal.

I'm glad to say that I don't teach on a fluff degree course and we really try to maintain high standards - sometimes tough because of external pressures (since when did student failure rate and student survey ratings become divorced from student effort and be attributed solely to teacher effort?)

I hope UK education doesn't or hasn't gone the same way as the US. There are mandatory qualification requirements for some of the simplest jobs. In other words, you either have to stay in education longer or go back into education, at your own expense of course, otherwise you cannot get a job.

I've had to lay people off who have been doing the same job for years because there has been a mandatory qualification requirement introduced and the employee has to go back to school to qualify for work. Sometimes having to take preliminary exam tests in non related subjects in order to have those qualifications before advancing to the next step.

Conspiracy theory from higher authority, I'm convinced.

It's not got as far as widespread mandatory requirements yet, but essentially most employers will hire the more qualified person, if previous experience is similar. So even if the job is stacking shelves at Tesco, they'd probably take a degree-holder over a non-degree holder.

An interesting (subjective) aside on qualifications but I was a decision maker for Income Support back before I left Blighty and the qualifications for my grade; where I alone made the decision on if those people (who lived in the area served by Brent Jobcentre Plus and whose last names started with the letter L-P) were ...

Five GCSEs

Luckily, I had A levels and even went to university for a few years but there were a few, shall we say, not quite bright sparks working in those offices ...

When I started work, the minimum qualifications for my job were 4 'O' levels, I had 'A@ levels so got to start at a higher grade, but we had to take work related exams before being alowed to progress, and if you failed these then you were out on your ear. When I left, you were expected to start with a BSc in the specific field, honours prefered, but at least all thos who qualified through the earlier routes were not forced to study for the new qualifications, in fact the exams we pseed at the higher level were always stated to be honours degree equivalent, but they had to create jobs for the universities.