Mr Rizwan has decided not to go to university - is that a good idea?

Hi there guys, I came across a BBC report on young people considering their options for university and I would like to analyse a statement made by a young man in Birmingham. Rizwan said that he had considered going to university like other members of his family but when he saw them struggling to find work, he decided that it wasn't for him so he is going to not bother with a degree. He was quoted as saying, "I really don't see the point. These days you can get a degree, then you go for a job interview and they ask you for experience. If you just start working, then you can build up your skills slowly so later you can end up in a better position." So is Rizwan right? It is complex, there are a few issues that we need to look at a lot more closely and discuss as Rizwan isn't completely right either - so in today's post, I shall be looking more generally at this argument for young people to not bother with a degree in this day and age, as many more young people like Rizwan are making that conscious decision not to spend all that time and effort getting a degree. 

1. There are jobs that do require a relevant degree, whilst others don't. 

If you wanted to become a doctor, you need a degree in medicine and have all the relevant training in order to obtain the qualifications to practice as a doctor. The same can be said about many more technical careers such as in engineering where there is a clear division between an electronic engineer who has all the relevant degrees and a technician like an electrician who has entered the profession without a degree. Hence in this case, the electronic engineer will often be paid more than the electrician and it will be a lot easier for the engineers to increase their earnings compared to the electricians because their careers are on completely different  trajectories and they are doing very different tasks on a day by day basis. We don't know what kind of career Rizwan had in mind but if he wanted to become an electrician, he might find himself very frustrated when he see the graduates who have become engineers progressing a lot more quickly with their careers. However, if Rizwan somehow managed to get a job in financial services like me, then the fact that he doesn't have a degree matters a lot less - in banking, employers tend to employ candidates who are graduates but that's not always the case given that most candidate don't have a relevant degree at all! The employers simply want to employ people who are fast learners, good problem solvers and have great social skills, so they can adapt and climb that steep learning curve quickly in the banking world. After all these years in banking, no employer has ever bothered to ask to see a copy of my degree or even ask which university I studied at which is just as well, as I have a completely useless degree in any case. Thus if Rizwan is going to eschew a degree, he needs to then consciously avoid career paths where that is going to hold him back - so for example, finance and IT are probably really good options for him, whilst we can rule out engineering and healthcare. If Rizwan is willing to accept that some career paths will be closed off to him, then he can get quite an advantage over his peers in saving a lot of money and time by not bothering with a degree. Unfortunately, the BBC article doesn't tell us what kind of job he has at the moment or what his long term career ambitions are; all we can do is hope that he knows what he is doing and that things work out well for him in the long run. 

2. What about building up your skills then? 

This is the part that Rizwan has taken for granted though as it is not as simple as it seems. Allow me to give you an example from my company at the moment: currently we have a young person whom we shall call 'Dylan' (not his real name) doing some work experience with us. Dylan is related to the big boss and thus has been given the opportunity to learn from our COO '(chief operating officer'). Our COO is extremely busy and she is more than happy to get an extra pair of hands to do some of her work, even if that has to come in the form of an intern like Dylan, rather than a full time member of staff. Nonetheless, she has given Dylan an assignment to do and I was asked to take a look at the work that Dylan had produced as it involved an area that I knew a lot more about than my COO. Thus I 'marked' the assignment that Dylan had been tasked to do and concluded that 34.8% of it met my standards whilst 65.2% was incomplete, incorrect or wrong in some way. I shared my findings with my COO and then we spent some more time with Dylan training him to perform that task better. I was very patient with Dylan as I knew he was related to the big boss, I wouldn't normally be this nice or patient with a colleague who only delivered 34.8% on an assignment given to him. But then again, Dylan was just a kid with no experience, my expectations weren't high and hopefully he will perform better on the next assignment we give him. In this story, it is evident that Dylan is in a very privileged position as he had both my COO and myself training him and helping him improve a number of skills required to perform that task well. So would Rizwan be able to teach himself such skills without senior members of staff in a company taking the time and effort to train him? No, Rizwan would end up doing working class jobs for non-graduates, such as in the service industry and any kind of training he would receive would be restricted to do those working class jobs well. Imagine if Rizwan gets a job working in McDonald's as kitchen crew, the only training he would receive would be from a local branch manager and it would be related to tasks like preparing the food or cleaning the premises; however he will never ever be invited to participate in a marketing meeting at the head office for McDonald's latest advertising campaign. We call that kind of privilege nepotism. 

3. But if Rizwan doesn't have relatives who are big bosses, is he better off getting a degree then?

It depends! Whether you are a graduate or not, getting extra help in the form of nepotism will always boost your career. When you attend a university, you're paying for the staff there to teach you a course which hopefully will turn out to be useful and relevant to your future career. But I am a great advocate of teaching yourself useful things - I pride myself in being fluent in Spanish despite never having taken a single Spanish lesson in my life. However, I think it is a huge ask to expect someone like Rizwan to simply figure everything out for himself without getting the kind of help that Dylan is getting from me. Getting a degree is a useful experience for immature young people to learn how to figure out very difficult concepts - your lecturer is going to tell you to read up on chapter 17 before next Monday and be prepared to come to the next class to discuss what you have learnt about chapter 17, you're not going to get spoon-fed information about chapter 17 like a kid in primary school. Thus I benefitted from that experience of doing a lot of independent research on my own at university and I became very good at procuring the kind of information I needed. Could I have done that on my own without spending three years at university? Yes, I think so, but hindsight is 2020. But let's be clear, the kind of attention and help that your average university is getting from their tutors is nothing compared to the quality of help that Dylan is getting from myself and my COO. Dylan is getting something so valuable that no amount of money in the world can buy and that's probably the kind of experience that a working class young person like Rizwan will never be able to benefit from, even if he did made it to a very good university. Thus I would say that if Rizwan had the grades to go to a great university, then it wouldn't be a bad idea to get that degree. But if he only had the grades to make it to a very mediocre (or worse) university then I would be the first to tell him to forget getting that kind of degree as it wouldn't be worth his time at all to pursue. He didn't give us any information about the other members of his family who didn't benefit from getting a degree, but I doubt they went to great universities like Oxford and Cambridge. At least Rizwan does seem to have a good attitude in this aspect and he is willing to think outside the box rather than just expect someone else like the government to step in and help him. But how much he can achieve on his own when competing with guys like Dylan?

4. Rizwan made a point about the importance of having work experience, is that a valid point? 

Actually, no! You can have decades of work experience but if it is not relevant, then it doesn't count for anything I'm afraid. The problem that Rizwan faces is that he isn't really qualified to do any kind of skilled or professional job at this stage and he is really dependent on an employer giving him that first step into a new career, he needs to get his foot in the door. Rizwan is currently considered unskilled and he needs to have sufficient training before he can acquire a skill to perform a more highly paid job. So if Rizwan wanted to get a job as a delivery courier, he could start today as the job is really quite easy - all you have to do is get the package from A to B either by bike or car. But jobs like that pay very little and if he wanted to pursue a far more lucrative career, then he would need an employer to provide the requisite training on the job. Someone like Dylan has that opportunity given to him on a silver platter, all thanks to nepotism but what about Rizwan? He could spend years going from one poorly paid job to another and if he comes to me ten years from now, I'd simply look at his CV and say, yes I can see that you've been working for over ten years since you have left school, but none of that work experience is relevant to the role I am recruiting for so I have to say no to you. Without a rich and successful relative using nepotism to give Rizwan those valuable opportunities, I'm afraid a lot of the work experience that he can get for himself would be totally useless when it comes to accessing better paid professional jobs. Yes there are some things which you can teach yourself, such as in my case, when I studied Spanish on my own but the whole point about getting a degree from a top university is to impress an employer to the point where they are convinced you're brilliant, that you will make an ideal employee and so they will be happy to invest time, energy and effort giving you the training you need to do the job well. That was the route that most people have to take if they are not as privileged as Dylan. The odds are stacked against Rizwan and whilst he is aware of the need to build up his skills to access better jobs, I am not sure he is aware of just how difficult it is to access those opportunities to get the right training. Without  a degree from a top university and/or some nepotism, Rizwan may find himself moving from one lowly paid job to another over the next few years and make little progress with his skills training, so I hope he has not underestimated this aspect.

5. Are employers being unreasonable in asking for both a degree and work experience? 

No, get real - they are not! The fact is for every one good position that opens up, there will be so many applicants for that job. So imagine if there are 20 very credible candidates for that one position, the employer isn't going to say, "oh they are all great, so instead we shall conduct a lucky draw to select the candidate at random." Instead the employer will use other criteria such as relevant experience in order to further separate the different candidates to narrow down the field. Practically all university students get some work experience when they are undergrads, so that could come in the form of part time work, volunteer work and internships. Privileged rich kids like Dylan will often get excellent internships whilst poorer kids have to work to make ends meet, but if you went through university with zero work experience, it then begs the question - what the heck were you doing with your free time? Playing computer games or sleeping? Furthermore, note that with most entry level positions where employers are actually quite relaxed about work experience you may have, as they just want to see that you can function in the working world. If we are dealing with a candidate who is applying for an entry level position, then in the vast majority of cases, employers will be reasonable in terms of how much relevant work experience they are expecting a fresh graduate to have. Whereas if you want to apply for more senior positions, then of course employers have every right to demand a certain amount of relevant experience as they want someone who can hit the ground running, rather than get a newbie who will need a lot of training and help for the first six months. The fact is you're never going to get graduates who have been taught everything they need to know to do the job at university because the university has absolutely no idea what kind of jobs their students will apply for upon graduation. So even if you did a degree in engineering to qualify as an engineer, every company employing engineers will have different projects they are working on and each project would require a unique set of skills specific to those projects. So employers just want to have some evidence and reassurance that the young candidate is experienced when it comes to adapting to these challenges, when presented with the steep learning curve associated with any new project. 

6. The delayed German train analogy - always make sure you get on the right train.

Time for an analogy: last summer when I was on holiday in Germany, I was traveling from the city of Trier to the town of Merzig and there were two options available. There was the express intercity train makes very few stops and the slower regional train which stops at every single little village along the way. It is possible to travel from Trier to Merzig on the express train but when I got to the station, I saw that the express train was delayed but the slower regional train was on time. My first instinct was to just jump on the slower train as I know I would definitely get back to Merzig that evening on it, even if it was slightly slower and I had no information about when the delayed faster train would arrive at Trier station. However, I decided that I needed to try to get more information before jumping on that slower train. Besides, I wanted a chance to practice my German with the lady at the information desk. Thus I explained my situation to her, I needed to get back to Merzig this evening, can you help me decide if I should wait for the delayed express train or if I would be better off getting on the slow train that will be departing soon? Being German, this lady methodically started typing away on the computer in front of her, then quickly made a phone call to confirm the information she found and then said to me that the delayed train is actually no more than 15 minutes away from Trier but it had been stuck behind another train that had broken down. However, she had just received confirmation from her colleagues that the broken down train has been dealt with and so the express intercity train will be on the move again very soon. By her calculations, I would still get into Merzig a lot quicker if I waited about 15 to 20 minutes for the express train, as it would eventually overtake the slow train that is departing imminently from Trier station. I took her good advice, went to get some take away food in the station concourse before boarding the delayed intercity train for Merzig and sure enough, as I had been reliably informed by that kind German lady, the train I was on did overtake the slower regional train en route to Merzig. So the moral of the story is that my initial instincts to jump on to the first train leaving Trier were wrong and I had done right thing by speaking to that lady who knew far more about that situation than I did so I could make an informed decision about which train to choose. 

Let's compare Rizwan's situation to what happened to me in Germany, I can understand why Rizwan might feel happy for stepping into the working world ahead of his peers. Whilst they are still in student mode, doing homework and attending classes, Rizwan feels like an adult - he is going to work and his colleagues in his team are older than him. Most of all, he is earning money whilst his peers are still either mostly dependent on their parents or desperately trying to make ends meet whilst working a few part time jobs as university students. However, it is important to focus on what will happen 20 or even 25 years in the future - would Rizwan be better off than his peers who did go to university or would they eventually overtake him in terms of their earning power? So we're back at the train station in Trier where we have to decide if we want to get on the slower train that is leaving imminently or wait a long time for the express intercity train. Rizwan has jumped on the slower regional train and he is betting on an outcome whereby those who are waiting for the faster intercity express train would never catch up, that he has amassed enough of a head start to always have an advantage. So whether catching the first train out of the station is a good strategy will depend on just how delayed the express train is, are graduates going to gain a much bigger advantage over Rizwan in the long run and would that advantage thus make it worth the sacrifices to get a degree worthwhile? This is not an easy question to answer, as it would depend on what kind of degree the young person is getting. Getting a degree from an excellent university like Oxford or Cambridge would be like waiting for the fastest bullet train from Japan, you know it is going to give you a massive advantage for the future. But if it is a useless degree from a university at the wrong end of the league table, then it is highly unlikely to give you any kind of advantage and then you're far better off doing what Rizwan did by entering the workforce without that kind of degree. What you need to do is for someone to analyse your A level results and prescribe the best decision based on the options available to you at that point - there is no one size fits all solution, so even in Rizwan's case, it would depend on how well or badly he did for his A level exams. I wonder if he had anyone to turn to, in order to make the right decision about all his options? I fear he may have way too much confidence in his own judgment. 

7. Wait, you're making an unfair assumption here about Rizwan's situation. 

Well, yes I did realize that I had taken one look at Rizwan's situation and made a few assumptions which may or may not be true - I saw that he's from Birmingham, Muslim, South Asian: thus most probably very working class and therefore extremely unlikely to have the kind of good results that would have given him access to any of the universities at or near the top of the league tables in the UK; yes, I also made the same assumptions about the other members of his family who did get a degree. If Rizwan had the grades to go to Oxford, he wouldn't think twice about it. Likewise, if his family members had a degree from a top university like Oxford or Cambridge, then they wouldn't have had any difficulty finding work upon graduation. Hence my assumptions are not totally baseless, it is a calculated guess that is probably accurate.

8. Could we look at those who are average rather than the extreme, what about them then? 

Good question, there are 130 universities in the UK. So roughly the smartest 7.7% will go into the top 10 universities, those are obviously the ones that employers would be looking out for. Then the bottom 50% will go into the worst 65 universities, now those are the ones that employers will be wary of. Then there are those in the middle who attended a university ranked 11th to 64th - but actually, it is not quite fair to say that they are in the 'middle' actually as they are above average, just not amongst the best. So the question for these people would be, is it really worth getting a degree from a mediocre university that is ranked say 45th on the league tables? At what stage do you draw the line and say, beyond this ranking, you're better off not getting a degree at all because that choice of university will raise far more questions like, "oh my goodness, how the hell did you end up there? And why did you do that badly for your A level exams?  Did you not study for those exams?" There is no simple way I can simply draw a line in the ranking table and say that is the zone "thou shalt not ever venture beyond" as rankings can vary from year to year, particularly in the middle range where the universities can move up and down the ranking quite erratically from year to year - this is unlike the very top of the ranking, where you will always see the usual elite universities that always occupy the top spots. Well, the closer you are to the top, the more likely you are to get away with it - so a university that is ranked 17th or 27th on the league table isn't going to raise any many eyebrows as one that is ranked 47th to 57th on the league table. At this point, it depends on what else the individual has achieved in their lives, "okay, I know she went to a rather mediocre university but look at all of these other very interesting achievements on her CV. " Hence the more mediocre your university is, the more you are going to have to prove yourself beyond your academic achievements in order to compensate for the mediocre university and no, there is no dodging the issue here when you are faced with such stiff competition for all the best jobs. But if you are spending so much effort trying to distract potential employers with your other achievements beyond your degree, oh then that's a very good sign that your useless degree really isn't worth the time, money or effort. 

So what conclusions can we draw after this discussion then? 

A lot of it will boil down to whether or not you have the grades to get into an excellent university. I hate to state the obvious, but the playing field is not level at all. Someone as privileged as Dylan would get away with a degree from a terrible university or with no degree at all, as his father would be able to get him all the training he needs to ensure that he can get a good job; whereas someone like Rizwan would really struggle to get employers to give him the chance to access that kind of training without a degree from a prestigious university to convince them that it would be worth their while investing in him. Thus for Dylan, it really doesn't matter what he does - whether he goes to a good or bad university or doesn't bother with a degree altogether, his future is still bright because he would always get all the training and opportunities he needs thanks to his father. The odds are stacked against Rizwan but like him, I too am Asian and came from a working class family, so I am only too aware of the challenges that someone like Rizwan would face. I wish Rizwan good luck; I hope he will be successful in convincing senior, more experience experts in the industry of his choice to give him the training and opportunities he will need to further his career. Those vital opportunities are never going to be given to him on a silver platter and like me, he would have to fight for every chance he can get. Call me old fashioned, but I feel he should have studied harder for his A levels in the first place in order to have gained entry to a very good university. So there you go, that's it from me on this topic - what do you think? Have I been way too sceptical about Rizwan not doing a degree? What else could he do to maximize his chances of success without a degree? Do you think Rizwan made the right choice? Are degrees really overrated in 2023 or are they still essential? Have you met any young people like Rizwan who have turned their backs on a degree? Please leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.