Billy_Boy wrote:Engineering is difficult and a degree is no guarantee of a well paid job, let alone one many people would want to do. The majority of Economics graduates I have met have been odious know-it-alls. Don't forget that Gordon Brown was an Economics lecturer so it's hardly a ringing endorsement of financial savvy, is it?
TBF, I know a few people who went to uni to 'put off getting a real job' for 3 or more years.
I read Engineering at Cardiff university. I was put in a flat of 8 for digs for the first year:
1. Electronic & Electrical Engineering (me).
2. Computer science.
3. Theology.
4. Theology.
5. History & Theology.
6. Sociology & Social Policy.
7. Archaeological Conservation.
8. Integrated Engineering.
To my knowledge, only 3 of us have had careers related to our training since we left. The rest of them work in HR & similar "admin" roles.
I never intended to become an Electronic Engineer. I picked that degree because it involved lots of hard maths & science, and would be "proof" that I was capable of doing something genuinely challenging and difficult. Never occurred to me to do something "wooly".
For the record, I went straight into IT, which was a logical enough step in 1997, when the industry was going through its major expansion period & there was money to be made there.
Oddly enough, there was a period where Project Managers and similar roles were being filled with History graduates and the like. Coincided with the dot com bubble bursting, and those days seem to be nothing but a spine-chilling memory.