Hammonds crash on Sunday night

Yes certainly, but most 18 year olds couldn't do those jobs, the ones who can bubble to the top (a "keen 18-year-old" is practically an oxymoron), a degree in it will help turn those who couldn't into those who can. Also I have met many people who didn't do a degree in my field, people who are very good at my field, but I've been able to do things they can't simply because I learned skills on my degree course that are hard to come by anywhere else. And I wasn't a good student, I took 6 years to do a 3-year degree due to money and other hassles and scraped a 2/2.

A degree is no guarantee of a good worker, they're not an apprenticeship for a specific job. It's a solid grounding in a subject and then the candidate then tries for a first job, often menial and not really using their skills (I worked on a support desk) but I have found repeatedly that skills I learned in my time at uni have been very useful indeed. I've used my uni skills more than the skills I learned training to be a radio officer on merchant navy vessels, also a 3-year course but all hands-on.

Well what with all the methane!

Go? IMHO it's already gorn

If you can be bothered to look you can find a web site to back any argument!

Here's one I found....

"The core programme comprises four modules in the first year. Thes modules are studied by all students on the general Computer Science degree as well as those doing the specialist degrees. The first year gives you the Computer Science knowledge you need before you specialise in a certain area. The modules you will study are:

Programming

Software Systems Development

Computer Systems and Networks

Formal Systems

In your second year you study four modules. These consist of the two core modules: programming; and software systems development plus one option module and one specialist module. The specialist module for this degree is Software Project Management.

Supervised industrial experience.

In your final year you study two option modules, one specialist module and you undertake a project in the area of your specialism."

*Some* still do, most don't - amazing eh!

Not so, have a look at other courses and read through what the nice words say to see what thay actually mean.

So that's why librarians are so well paid - they are in demand?

So Human Resource Management, Business Management in Practice (case studies), Business Management in Practice (project), Current Issues in Business Management, Environmental Management for Business, Principles of Marketing and Mangement don't have large elements of leadrship in them? You'd just make a descision and everyone will do as you say? A couple of hours in the machine shops at Rists would have helped on this one!

There is - just think about what the words actually mean.

You need all of the above - you just don't use the languange they use to describe it. In your daily running of you business you will use skills gained in all the above subject areas, except possibly International Marketing, you just won't give it a label.

Business should not expect a graduate to know their job before they start - that's why most big companies have Graduate Training Schemes where graduates are given an opportunity to work in many relevant areas of the business before selecting, or being selected, for a particular role. Only when they have experience in their chosen area can they apply for a particular job per se. These days, however, a lot of employers expect to get fully trained operatives off the shelf, which have always existed but were HND students. Many degrees have been dumbed down to HND level to ensure supplies, which is a shame.

Terry Pratchet does a wnderful discourse on this subject in the latest "Science of the Discworld" Books "Darwin's Clock", needless to say he can put it much better than I.

Go on you tell me!

Believe me, I'm very up on mental health issues (a relative).

Comments like

display a total lack of kwnowledge about such issues.

Psychotherapists are not psychologists in this context. Psychotherapists have medical training.

I do, I do :-)

Richard

But you said earlier you didn't use most of the skills learned on your degree.

Well, that's not exactly a surprise. There's not a lot of call for signalmen outside the railway either! And very few prototype wiring jobs these days :-(

Coming from others, indeed it's better to be prepared ;-)

Richard

Find one that backs the argument that all comp sci degrees are the same as Microsoft engineer courses then. If someone wanted to they can limit their choices if they wanted to, but I've never met anyone on an MCSE or whatever course who was anything but shit, but I've met more OK comp sci grads.

I did, try not to see what you want to see.

As far as you're concerned, all an english course qualifies you for is being a librarian. That's stupid. For a start, why would a librarian need an english degree? All they do is sort books and check them in and out.

No, not a large element. Knowing what needs to be done isn't "leadership", leadership is about trying to get people to actually do it. No point just making decisions without having the knowledge to know what the decision should be. Most of a business studies or management degree is about gaining the knowledge needed to guide the decisions, a small part, if any, is about leadership, you can learn that in a short time if you've got what it takes.

No, the courses teach you how to make the decisions, any leadership stuff can be sorted out on your own time or in optional modules, after all it's not that hard to cover the theory of how to actually lead people, whether that helps the individual do it or not is another matter. Covering the legal aspects, theory, worked examples etc of what the decisions should be takes a lot longer.

I looked, but didn't paste yet another one in here as I thought perhaps you might like to find out yourself, seems I was wrong though. Go and have a look.

Have a look at what psychologists treat.

Hmm......

That's right, and can you explain how "skills I learned in my time at uni have been very useful indeed" contradicts that? I've not needed

80% of what I learned at uni, 20% at best has been very useful indeed. There was no way to predict when I was doing the course which 20% that would be.

Most of the work I did on the merchant navy course was repair-work on electronic equipment and electronic theory, they put all the really specialist stuff like morse code into the final year so people could decide to do TV repair or something (back when it was a skilled job, or even a job at all).

I never said that! I never even mentioned "Microsoft engineer courses"!

Touche.

Really!! You'll go down a storm at the annual librarians dinner. They might even get excited ;-)

Ah right. That certainly explains a great deal about Business Management graduates then, if your view is correct.

But a good leader knows how to make descisions, and on what to base that descision. By definition.

Sorry, not falling for that tactic! If you've got a point, make it. As you havn't, I'll assume the point is fatuous.

Your getting dangerously confused between the medical psychologist and the can't-think-of-anything-else-to-do "student". The latter may become the former, but not without a great deal of training.

Would you care to expand on "Hmm.....", or do I just assume it means you are right and I am wrong "just because"?

Anyway, looks like this has gone as far as it can - we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Richard

Bad form following up own posts etc.....

Clinical Psychologists - thats the title used in the medical trade to differentiate themselves from the student type ones.

Richard

The point I am trying to get across is that those doing the road repairs do not have to consider such costs, only their own costs, so the methods chosen are the cheapest ones for them regardless of the consequences. Greg

The real problem is in that paragraph, and is nothing to do with the relative merits of some degree or another. And not much to do with your particular situation.

Can you see what it is yet?

It's that bit about businesses wanting pre-trained people, especially big businesses. If you can't find the relevant external courses, or arrange training courses within the business, I'd wonder if the business really knows what it's doing. Some of the stuff they do, like site inductions and safety certificates, doesn't really advance the quality and skill of their staff, but if you're working for $BIG_COMPANY and they can't point you to an accessible course to improve your skills, they're missing the boat.

I was a farmer. There were all sorts of courses available. Some, like Pesticide Application, was required by law, but I learnt stuff from them. Others, like BASIS, had a better payoff for large farmers. And, my God! the stories about the tractor driving of agricultural students. But farming is an industry that has to train the new workers, and does so in all sorts of ways which don't get formal attention.

OK, well you did moan about people being taught to programme windows apps, can't see anything wrong with that, after all programmes have to run on something, and it's not what it runs on that matters, it's what it does, e.g. modelling weather, drugs trials, or a VR environment featuring claudia schiffer (please).

The mind boggles!

Indeed, not what you said earlier though. You need to know where to go, which takes a lot of training to negotiate the minefield of red tape, politicing and methodologies, but you also have to get others to follow --- but the "follow" part is pretty much there by default anyway as the company pays their wages, it's certainly the bit that needs the least training.

The point is made, as in you aren't prepared to check what you're saying before you say it ;-)

I disagree! Hehe.

It once did. (with few exceptions) The top achievers went to uni, obtained a degree, had it paid for with a grant, and then obtained an appropriate job. Sow's ears shouldn't get through the uni's gates in the first instance.

Now (thanks to Labour) more people than ever get degrees, mainly in 'soft' subjects. They then find that they have to enter the workplace doing a very average job on average money with a huge student loan to repay with no hope of saving for a deposit for a house. The stewardess I referred to earlier is a good example and earns around 9K PA, (seriously!) there's absolutely no sense in that whatsoever IMO.

Education at degree level should be reserved for top achievers, (not me, I couldn't stand any more education after A levels) and students should be properly funded. Most importantly, if the 'degrees for all' mentality of the Government changed, then many soft subject would no longer need to be offered.

Manufacturing industry is what we need in the UK ASAP, hence scientists, mathematicians and engineers of all disciplines - unless someone can explain how we can sustain an enormous trade deficit indefinitely?

Julian.

When it comes to roads there simply isn't enough money to do anything but piecemeal repairs, they can only afford to repair the very worst bits, not the slightly better bits inbetween. That's a fact and will remain so unless government makes more money available. Greg

I doubt it. If you use the machines for more hours every day you're going to have to pay more for wear and tear, maintenance and depreciation. It seems to have been overlooked that the number of hours a machine has been run for is a far greater factor in depreciation than its age.

Don't forget that if they miraculously trebled their work rate, it would be necessary to either find more funding to do more work to keep the current staff occupied or start laying people off as there wouldn't be enough work to keep them going all year.

Do you honestly believe that the hire charges would be the same if you ran the machinery for 24 hours a day instead of 8 hours?

Would you really want to return to the working conditions and labour relations of the industrial revolution?

I presume you would be willing to work rotating shifts on the roads, seeing as you are so happy to suggest that others should do it?

On or around Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:41:18 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@btopenworld.com (Tim Jones) enlightened us thusly:

seems unlikely.

On or around Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:40:02 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@btopenworld.com (Tim Jones) enlightened us thusly:

In the case of the roadmenders, I reckon given the funding 3 times as much roadmending might, in abotu 10 years get the roads into something like decent shape.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to work towards a full set of all-terrain vehicles.

On or around Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:46:29 -0000, "Rich" enlightened us thusly:

no bugger talks it proper no more.