“Go to university!” they said. “It’ll get you a good job!”
Perhaps university will get you a good job, and perhaps it won’t, but one thing is for sure: if you think that university study alone will land you your dream job, you are going to be very disappointed in a few years time.
I have appointed more than a hundred people in my career, and not one of them got their job on the basis of their university study alone. They got their role because of the knowledge and experience they had, the skills they could demonstrate, the motivation they showed, and their aptitude to learn.
So, what exactly is the link between university and careers?
The way most people talk about university, both in the media and amongst politicians, is that university should be an investment; you pay your fees, and benefit financially by getting a better job with better pay. Much research has been done to understand which subjects have the biggest financial benefit, and which have the least (and are therefore, by this logic, a waste of your time).
But to my mind this approach is simply false. It fails to recognise that your financial future is not intrinsically tied to your university education. It is in fact far more tied to your choice of career and/or job. University is simply one of the potential routes you can take that may lead you to a particular career.
It is true that in the UK graduates earn more than non-graduates (around £11,500 more per year) and that they are significantly less likely to be unemployed, BUT there are plenty of hugely successful individuals who earn very well without having gone to university. And there are plenty of graduates who are not in high paid jobs.
The view that university is a purely financial investment also completely ignores the wider range of benefits of the university experience. University will help you grow as an individual, giving you experience and knowledge that may have little bearing on your career, but which will help you enjoy your life far beyond the workplace. You’ll also make lifelong friends along the way, and who knows, you might even meet your future husband or wife!
And of course, the financial investment narrative fails to recognise that your financial gain is rarely the driving force of the people who teach you. However much the government pushes the employment agenda, and however much universities build transferable and employability skills into their degrees, I doubt you will ever meet an English Literature lecturer who is motivated by helping you increase your earning potential. No, they are motivated by a passion for literature and the challenge of passing their knowledge and passion on to you!
If you go to university with the explicit expectation that it will make you rich, I’m afraid to tell you that you are very likely to be disappointed.
So, instead of looking at simply getting a job, or looking at pure financial gain, I prefer to look at things another way. Ask yourself these questions instead: What do you need in order to forge your way in the world; to build your life and your career? What do you need to forge a career that will be enjoyable, secure, and flexible, so that you can live the life you want, not just for the next five years, but for the fifty or so years beyond that?
The basic ingredients to a successful career
I wrote last week about the importance of learning how to learn, and in a rapidly changing world this is the most useful skill any of us can develop.
Beyond that, I’d argue that there are three basic ingredients to a successful career: knowledge, skills, and experience.
To these three basics, you can add contacts, connections and supporters; those people in your life that help and support you as you build your life and career.
And finally for some careers, you’ll need accreditation; a specific bit of paper that tells the world that you are recognised as having the specific knowledge, skills and experience needed to undertake that role.
So, the question then becomes: Is university the right place for you to go and start gathering these basic ingredients?
Knowledge
The knowledge you’ll need will depend entirely on what you want to do. You won’t get far as a sports journalist if you don’t have a pretty in-depth knowledge of sports. You won’t make a good doctor if your physiology knowledge isn’t up to scratch. And you’ll struggle as a civil engineer without a robust understanding of calculus. University can definitely help you build knowledge. In fact, it should be pretty obvious that the pursuit of knowledge is very much what universities do!
Skills
So what skills do you need? It really doesn’t matter what work you go into, you’ll need the ability to analyse, and check whether what you are being told is true. You’ll need to be able to problem solve, if you are to be given responsibilities of your own. You’ll need to build a wide range of soft skills, like teamwork, leadership, and empathy. Whole books have been written about these, and you can read more about the skills you’ll need in the future here.
Well guess what? Universities spend considerable effort into building these skills into the curriculum and beyond. University isn’t the only place to go to build skills, but it is a pretty good place to start..
Experience
And what about experience? Generally, you need to be able to provide specific evidence that you have the knowledge and skills in order to do a specific job. You’ll demonstrate this evidence through your experience; either through work experience, or through other activities that you have done.
Whether university provides you with the right experience you need will vary massively from course to course. Heavily practical courses, such as Medicine or teacher training are 100% designed to give you the experience you need. At the other extreme, courses such as English literature or history are almost certainly not designed to give you specific work experience.
But even in these cases, your time at university can give you tremendous opportunities to gain experience through extra-curricular activities, volunteering, part-time work, internships and of course summer work.
Again, university is not the only place that you build knowledge, skills and experience. You can also look at the world of work, training and apprenticeships. But for many, university is a very good place to start: it's accessible, it’s achievable (for most), and despite what the media would have you believe, it’s affordable (at least for those eligible for government funding). Oh yes, and university can also be hugely enjoyable and rewarding. For most people who go, it will be a life-defining experience.
Contacts, connections and supporters
University is also a great place to start to build your contacts, connections and supporters. What better connections could you have than those who will be forging their careers in parallel with you, in the same discipline? Friends will be peers who will have your back - often lifelong.
Meanwhile, teachers and other professionals at the university will be there to advise, support, and provide references, very often for years beyond your degree. I owe much of my early career to a senior member of staff at the Students’ Union where I worked; she provided me with not only huge levels of sage advice and moral support, but also references for at least ten years.
Accreditation
And for many professions, university provides the accreditation you need. For some professions, like medicine, teaching, engineering, university is the only way you can gain the accreditation. For other areas, like accounting, marketing or aviation, you may find some elements of the accreditation at university, while full accreditation is typically gained by taking exams directly with the relevant professional body.
I hope this way of thinking about university is helpful for you. University is there to help you build knowledge, skills and experience that will help you forge your future life and careers. It should also help you build useful professional connections and supporters.
Finally, the bit of paper you get at the end will provide future employers with the re-assurance that you have at least some of the skills and knowledge that they are looking for, and that you have built up an ability to learn.
What next?
If you are still not sure why you might want to go to university, have a look at last week’s article:
