We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
There's certainly talk of reorientating towards the colleges - which have always been the Cinderella of the system, compared to unis and schools. Obvs we need toppo research unis, and ones that can bring in the money via foreign students, but the rush to get everyone capable of reading a comic to uni now looks outdated.
It looked misconceived at the time, and somewhat contrary to the other message being advanced a lot during my schooling in the 90s that ther are different types of intelligence and ability, and book learning was not for everyone and didn't mean people should not be afforded respect and opportunity.
Since then schools have gone down the there is one type of learning route. And it is academic and based around the acquisition of facts to enable you to pass exams. All the crafty, arty, sporty, technical, imaginative and creative stuff is a complete waste of time and won't fit in amongst the vital knowledge of dangling modifiers, Roman numerals and Harold Hadrada which the Tories deemed essential for a modern economy.
Partly thanks to Gove, partly because all that book learning is way cheaper to deliver.
Yeah. I'd edited my original comment because I didn't believe not naming the guilty parties was wrong. That the Tories still maintain the Gove reforms were a shining success says a lot. They only disown what they did when the system collapses. Then blame others
More kids can read. That's a success.
Indeed. But far fewer can have an original thought, write a story, critique an opinion, play an instrument, cook a meal or construct an argument. Hence bewilderment and helplessness when unable to get an entry level job. The overwhelming majority could always read.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
One of the unintended consequences of AI will be people no longer trusting in anything other than face to face contact.
The ability to be recorded by a smart phone and put on social media has replaced religious or societal shame in teenage behaviour in much the same way
“On paper, Ollie Kettle appears to be the ideal candidate for a competitive work experience placement.
The 21-year-old achieved straight A grades at A-level and is predicted to graduate with a first-class degree in biology from the University of Bath this summer.
But last year, at the end of his second year of university, he applied for more than 120 summer internships in banking and finance – and did not secure a single one.
Ollie heard back from fewer than 5pc of the roles he applied for, leaving him with three interviews that all eventually turned into rejections.”
STEM, Uni of Bath. First class degree. No job. £50,000 in debt
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
What, that you cannot tell stuff written by chatGPT? They already have tools to detect AI, I'm sure it is not perfect (I know someone who had stuff flagged as 'probable AI' when I saw them write it), but on probabilities certain characteristics are suspicious.
“On paper, Ollie Kettle appears to be the ideal candidate for a competitive work experience placement.
The 21-year-old achieved straight A grades at A-level and is predicted to graduate with a first-class degree in biology from the University of Bath this summer.
But last year, at the end of his second year of university, he applied for more than 120 summer internships in banking and finance – and did not secure a single one.
Ollie heard back from fewer than 5pc of the roles he applied for, leaving him with three interviews that all eventually turned into rejections.”
STEM, Uni of Bath. First class degree. No job. £50,000 in debt
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Will there be any point in paying for a degree once AI has taken over all the entry-level jobs, though?
Well given you will still be unemployed even with no degree you may as well do a degree for the fun of it while in between full time jobs and living off your by then inevitable robot tax funded universal basic income.
If you want to become a lawyer or doctor or teacher you will also still need a degree unless AI is doing all those jobs too
But then you end up with £50,000 debt. Age 22. And no job
You talk like being a 3 year undergrad student is a freebie
It's awful.
I particularly dislike the life-long 'being in debt' thing.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
What, that you cannot tell stuff written by chatGPT? They already have tools to detect AI, I'm sure it is not perfect (I know someone who had stuff flagged as 'probable AI' when I saw them write it), but on probabilities certain characteristics are suspicious.
LiveScore summaries of football matches are so obviously not written by a human. I find them really irritating, and can't quite put my finger on why I know it's AI, but it is
There's certainly talk of reorientating towards the colleges - which have always been the Cinderella of the system, compared to unis and schools. Obvs we need toppo research unis, and ones that can bring in the money via foreign students, but the rush to get everyone capable of reading a comic to uni now looks outdated.
It looked misconceived at the time, and somewhat contrary to the other message being advanced a lot during my schooling in the 90s that ther are different types of intelligence and ability, and book learning was not for everyone and didn't mean people should not be afforded respect and opportunity.
Since then schools have gone down the there is one type of learning route. And it is academic and based around the acquisition of facts to enable you to pass exams. All the crafty, arty, sporty, technical, imaginative and creative stuff is a complete waste of time and won't fit in amongst the vital knowledge of dangling modifiers, Roman numerals and Harold Hadrada which the Tories deemed essential for a modern economy.
Partly thanks to Gove, partly because all that book learning is way cheaper to deliver.
Good. There are too many of them and it’s creating too many debt slaves.
Let the weaker ones close.
Or revert back to whatever tech colleges they started out as, offering day release and evening courses with relevance to the real world.
We also need HR departments to stop requiring degrees for jobs that shouldn’t need them, and where the skills necessary to gain a degree are not relevant to the post needing filled. Why force students to build up debt unnecessarily?
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Will there be any point in paying for a degree once AI has taken over all the entry-level jobs, though?
Well given you will still be unemployed even with no degree you may as well do a degree for the fun of it while in between full time jobs and living off your by then inevitable robot tax funded universal basic income.
If you want to become a lawyer or doctor or teacher you will also still need a degree unless AI is doing all those jobs too
But then you end up with £50,000 debt. Age 22. And no job
You talk like being a 3 year undergrad student is a freebie
It's awful.
I particularly dislike the life-long 'being in debt' thing.
Back to free education for the talented.
What did mediocre people do back then? Asking for a friend.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Though if you have no degree HR will bin your application for many middle class office jobs and you won't even get to the interview stage
Yes, I don't know when it was decided that certain jobs had to have it as a 'required' element rather than, say, 'desirable', but it is bloody odd when it is a job with many people in it who started out without a degree, and never suggested it was needed.
I get involved in the odd bit of recruitment - and always remove 'degree required' from the list. Because it isn't. It's certainly interesting if it's present and relevant, but an arbitrary degree in an unrelated subject adds nothing to a candidate and there are other ways in to the role.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Anecdata from a rather depressing conversation my wife had with two university friends the other day: Child a - always top of her class through school (admittedly at small town Catholic schools) with good degree in geography from Durham, followed (because no jobs) by a pointless masters in online communities and their norms* - now back home and without success in applying for jobs in the last six months. Is applying for TA jobs. Child b - always top of her class through school (admittedly at quite rough schools) - went to Newcastle University to study sociology** - has drifted from temp job to temp job for the last two years. Child c - always bright at school - is at Loughborough studying computing and suffering from depression at the pointlessness of it all - neither going to lectures nor having a social life, but not doing quite badly enough to get thrown out and paralysed by indecision. Child d - who is a genuine genius - just started in maths at Lancaster, following a switch from Manchester two weeks in whuch turned out not to be the experience he hoped - doing ok but not really flourishing (he will, I'm sure, fund a role, because he is a genuine genius. Should have been at Cambridge but fickle interview process.) Stepchild e - six months into degree at Newcastle Uni, but disillusionment and ennui has set in - wants to drop out but her actual mother won't let her. Stepchild f - only 16 but doesn't want to go to uni. Wants to be a chef.
I’d give that a Like but it’s too grim and too depressingly believable
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
I agree with so many of your posts and this is no exception
She has improved and is easy to listen to so much so my wife is charmed by her
The conservative party were rightly decimated in 2024, but largely due to Starmer's failures and poor governance resulting in the rise of extreme right and left parties, there will be space for Kemi not least because I expect Reform to implode
She has already announced she will scrap stamp duty on house sales, re-instate the 2 child cap, review all aspects of the economy and most recently address student loans
Apparently she has more announcements for young people and for me this is a welcome change from pandering to pensioners
I hope in time she will address the triple lock, but I am sure she knows she has a long hard road to walk down to GE29
I am supportive as we need a functioning consevative party as an antidote to the obnxious Farage and his party
The problem I have with her currently is she's playing the game of offering all kinds of nice things - stamp duty, the two child cap and now student loans but we are running a budget deficit of £120-140 billion and I don't yet see how she plans to reduce that as presumably she will seek to reduce taxation so it looks as though public spending will be in for the pain and she will need to explain to those who see their services reduced and their benefits cut why they should need to suffer in order others who frankly have plenty of wealth by comparison see their taxes reduced.
Indeed, I see her as only slightly different to the ex-Corbynite who is running to lead Newham Council on the platform of freezing Council Tax and restoring free parking for the first car in any household.
Yes, people will like it and vote for it but it's fiscally irresponsible and politically dishonest.
I'd have more respect for her if she were honest with the electorate and she accepted some of the things the Government in which she served as a Cabinet Minister weren't the best policies or at the very least admitted they didn't work as planned. Trying to airbrush the 2010-24 (and especially the 2019-24) administrations isn't a good look.
Surely the two child cap saves money, rather than being an offering of nice things that the govt can't afford?
The two child cap saves roughly tuppence ha'penny while creating a whole set of problems elsewhere...
I will once again point out that the biggest saving you can make is to solve problems as early as possible, for example if you still had Surestart we wouldn't have half the SEN crisis we now have..
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Will there be any point in paying for a degree once AI has taken over all the entry-level jobs, though?
Well given you will still be unemployed even with no degree you may as well do a degree for the fun of it while in between full time jobs and living off your by then inevitable robot tax funded universal basic income.
If you want to become a lawyer or doctor or teacher you will also still need a degree unless AI is doing all those jobs too
But then you end up with £50,000 debt. Age 22. And no job
You talk like being a 3 year undergrad student is a freebie
It's awful.
I particularly dislike the life-long 'being in debt' thing.
Back to free education for the talented.
What did mediocre people do back then? Asking for a friend.
Got a job at 16 or 18 and worked their way up by learning on the job, which was far more relevant. My dad did all right by it. Most good people did.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Though if you have no degree HR will bin your application for many middle class office jobs and you won't even get to the interview stage
Yes, I don't know when it was decided that certain jobs had to have it as a 'required' element rather than, say, 'desirable', but it is bloody odd when it is a job with many people in it who started out without a degree, and never suggested it was needed.
Don't get me started on the clean driving licence requirement for jobs which have never required anyone to drive anywhere ever.
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
I agree with so many of your posts and this is no exception
She has improved and is easy to listen to so much so my wife is charmed by her
The conservative party were rightly decimated in 2024, but largely due to Starmer's failures and poor governance resulting in the rise of extreme right and left parties, there will be space for Kemi not least because I expect Reform to implode
She has already announced she will scrap stamp duty on house sales, re-instate the 2 child cap, review all aspects of the economy and most recently address student loans
Apparently she has more announcements for young people and for me this is a welcome change from pandering to pensioners
I hope in time she will address the triple lock, but I am sure she knows she has a long hard road to walk down to GE29
I am supportive as we need a functioning consevative party as an antidote to the obnxious Farage and his party
The problem I have with her currently is she's playing the game of offering all kinds of nice things - stamp duty, the two child cap and now student loans but we are running a budget deficit of £120-140 billion and I don't yet see how she plans to reduce that as presumably she will seek to reduce taxation so it looks as though public spending will be in for the pain and she will need to explain to those who see their services reduced and their benefits cut why they should need to suffer in order others who frankly have plenty of wealth by comparison see their taxes reduced.
Indeed, I see her as only slightly different to the ex-Corbynite who is running to lead Newham Council on the platform of freezing Council Tax and restoring free parking for the first car in any household.
Yes, people will like it and vote for it but it's fiscally irresponsible and politically dishonest.
I'd have more respect for her if she were honest with the electorate and she accepted some of the things the Government in which she served as a Cabinet Minister weren't the best policies or at the very least admitted they didn't work as planned. Trying to airbrush the 2010-24 (and especially the 2019-24) administrations isn't a good look.
Surely the two child cap saves money, rather than being an offering of nice things that the govt can't afford?
The two child cap saves roughly tuppence ha'penny while creating a whole set of problems elsewhere...
I will once again point out that the biggest saving you can make is to solve problems as early as possible, for example if you still had Surestart we wouldn't have half the SEN crisis we now have..
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
What, that you cannot tell stuff written by chatGPT? They already have tools to detect AI, I'm sure it is not perfect (I know someone who had stuff flagged as 'probable AI' when I saw them write it), but on probabilities certain characteristics are suspicious.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
It's impossible, even after recruitment have whittled it down to a *a few hundred*, and even then it's just barely disguised AI. I think we should justg give up tbh - in person oral statements on the top of Rockall. At 5am. An access ramp will be provided to sea level.
In a different kind of country, I'd suggest something like UCAS for entry level jobs. You can make five applications main time round, using a standard form. Only one of them can be super elite etc.
We're not that sort of country, but it's a technical fix for the stupid numbers game.
“On paper, Ollie Kettle appears to be the ideal candidate for a competitive work experience placement.
The 21-year-old achieved straight A grades at A-level and is predicted to graduate with a first-class degree in biology from the University of Bath this summer.
But last year, at the end of his second year of university, he applied for more than 120 summer internships in banking and finance – and did not secure a single one.
Ollie heard back from fewer than 5pc of the roles he applied for, leaving him with three interviews that all eventually turned into rejections.”
STEM, Uni of Bath. First class degree. No job. £50,000 in debt
Biology so not exactly maths or a technology that is relevant to banking / Finance.
He would have been better off doing something relevant for his desired future career.
Biology would be perfectly fine for most graduate schemes, even for the most quantitative roles. We even offer roles to geography students, as long as it wasn't all colouring in. Just need to demonstrate you can do some code (python or SQL or whatever - doesn't matter) and handle numbers.
I'd just add that getting an internship is extremely difficult - jobs are much easier. What's weird is that firms are going in different directions - some are really going for school leavers (sink or swim, those who swim are very intense), whilst others are demanding PhD/Masters. The honours degree in isolation is looking a bit bleak.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
One of the unintended consequences of AI will be people no longer trusting in anything other than face to face contact.
The ability to be recorded by a smart phone and put on social media has replaced religious or societal shame in teenage behaviour in much the same way
Tangential but semi-related, just saw a YT short of an AI mockup scene of Terminator 2 with the US Office. Maybe bar one moment, pretty much impossible to tell it wasn't an actual scene from either.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Anecdata from a rather depressing conversation my wife had with two university friends the other day: Child a - always top of her class through school (admittedly at small town Catholic schools) with good degree in geography from Durham, followed (because no jobs) by a pointless masters in online communities and their norms* - now back home and without success in applying for jobs in the last six months. Is applying for TA jobs. Child b - always top of her class through school (admittedly at quite rough schools) - went to Newcastle University to study sociology** - has drifted from temp job to temp job for the last two years. Child c - always bright at school - is at Loughborough studying computing and suffering from depression at the pointlessness of it all - neither going to lectures nor having a social life, but not doing quite badly enough to get thrown out and paralysed by indecision. Child d - who is a genuine genius - just started in maths at Lancaster, following a switch from Manchester two weeks in whuch turned out not to be the experience he hoped - doing ok but not really flourishing (he will, I'm sure, fund a role, because he is a genuine genius. Should have been at Cambridge but fickle interview process.) Stepchild e - six months into degree at Newcastle Uni, but disillusionment and ennui has set in - wants to drop out but her actual mother won't let her. Stepchild f - only 16 but doesn't want to go to uni. Wants to be a chef.
So far, the young people in my extended family have bypassed University and are thriving in various trades.
Yep but there is a still a shed load of pressure from schools for any half intelligent child to go to University...
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
I agree with so many of your posts and this is no exception
She has improved and is easy to listen to so much so my wife is charmed by her
The conservative party were rightly decimated in 2024, but largely due to Starmer's failures and poor governance resulting in the rise of extreme right and left parties, there will be space for Kemi not least because I expect Reform to implode
She has already announced she will scrap stamp duty on house sales, re-instate the 2 child cap, review all aspects of the economy and most recently address student loans
Apparently she has more announcements for young people and for me this is a welcome change from pandering to pensioners
I hope in time she will address the triple lock, but I am sure she knows she has a long hard road to walk down to GE29
I am supportive as we need a functioning consevative party as an antidote to the obnxious Farage and his party
The problem I have with her currently is she's playing the game of offering all kinds of nice things - stamp duty, the two child cap and now student loans but we are running a budget deficit of £120-140 billion and I don't yet see how she plans to reduce that as presumably she will seek to reduce taxation so it looks as though public spending will be in for the pain and she will need to explain to those who see their services reduced and their benefits cut why they should need to suffer in order others who frankly have plenty of wealth by comparison see their taxes reduced.
Indeed, I see her as only slightly different to the ex-Corbynite who is running to lead Newham Council on the platform of freezing Council Tax and restoring free parking for the first car in any household.
Yes, people will like it and vote for it but it's fiscally irresponsible and politically dishonest.
I'd have more respect for her if she were honest with the electorate and she accepted some of the things the Government in which she served as a Cabinet Minister weren't the best policies or at the very least admitted they didn't work as planned. Trying to airbrush the 2010-24 (and especially the 2019-24) administrations isn't a good look.
Surely the two child cap saves money, rather than being an offering of nice things that the govt can't afford?
The two child cap saves roughly tuppence ha'penny while creating a whole set of problems elsewhere...
I will once again point out that the biggest saving you can make is to solve problems as early as possible, for example if you still had Surestart we wouldn't have half the SEN crisis we now have..
The wilful destruction of Surestart was an act of class warfare and political vandalism by the Bullingdon Boys that should never ever be forgiven.
Good. There are too many of them and it’s creating too many debt slaves.
Let the weaker ones close.
Or revert back to whatever tech colleges they started out as, offering day release and evening courses with relevance to the real world.
We also need HR departments to stop requiring degrees for jobs that shouldn’t need them, and where the skills necessary to gain a degree are not relevant to the post needing filled. Why force students to build up debt unnecessarily?
Problem is because of the social expectation to have degrees is higher (I have them myself), we get a situation where politicians do talk up things like apprenticeships or alternative training/education routes, but without any actual confrontation of the idea so many going is not necessary. As it will look like they are calling people too thick, or non-aspirational.
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
I agree with so many of your posts and this is no exception
She has improved and is easy to listen to so much so my wife is charmed by her
The conservative party were rightly decimated in 2024, but largely due to Starmer's failures and poor governance resulting in the rise of extreme right and left parties, there will be space for Kemi not least because I expect Reform to implode
She has already announced she will scrap stamp duty on house sales, re-instate the 2 child cap, review all aspects of the economy and most recently address student loans
Apparently she has more announcements for young people and for me this is a welcome change from pandering to pensioners
I hope in time she will address the triple lock, but I am sure she knows she has a long hard road to walk down to GE29
I am supportive as we need a functioning consevative party as an antidote to the obnxious Farage and his party
The problem I have with her currently is she's playing the game of offering all kinds of nice things - stamp duty, the two child cap and now student loans but we are running a budget deficit of £120-140 billion and I don't yet see how she plans to reduce that as presumably she will seek to reduce taxation so it looks as though public spending will be in for the pain and she will need to explain to those who see their services reduced and their benefits cut why they should need to suffer in order others who frankly have plenty of wealth by comparison see their taxes reduced.
Indeed, I see her as only slightly different to the ex-Corbynite who is running to lead Newham Council on the platform of freezing Council Tax and restoring free parking for the first car in any household.
Yes, people will like it and vote for it but it's fiscally irresponsible and politically dishonest.
I'd have more respect for her if she were honest with the electorate and she accepted some of the things the Government in which she served as a Cabinet Minister weren't the best policies or at the very least admitted they didn't work as planned. Trying to airbrush the 2010-24 (and especially the 2019-24) administrations isn't a good look.
Surely the two child cap saves money, rather than being an offering of nice things that the govt can't afford?
The two child cap saves roughly tuppence ha'penny while creating a whole set of problems elsewhere...
I will once again point out that the biggest saving you can make is to solve problems as early as possible, for example if you still had Surestart we wouldn't have half the SEN crisis we now have..
But @stodge's point was that Badenoch was offering expensive freebies that will not survive contact with reality. Keeping the two child cap isn't that
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Yes I think that’s the future, as I’ve said many times. The best universities will survive as amusing finishing schools for rich kids - or artistic and sporting talents
But that’s 10% of kids
The vast majority of 18 year olds will give up on higher education
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Will there be any point in paying for a degree once AI has taken over all the entry-level jobs, though?
Well given you will still be unemployed even with no degree you may as well do a degree for the fun of it while in between full time jobs and living off your by then inevitable robot tax funded universal basic income.
If you want to become a lawyer or doctor or teacher you will also still need a degree unless AI is doing all those jobs too
But then you end up with £50,000 debt. Age 22. And no job
You talk like being a 3 year undergrad student is a freebie
Especially insane when for today's students on Plan 5 the repayment threshold is less than 40 hours a week a National Minimum Wage.
Let alone being a "good" pay rate.
But the people on Plan 5 have barely made it to the jobs market yet. And as I understand it, Kemi thinks that Plan 5 is the answer to the iniquities of Plan 2.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
What, that you cannot tell stuff written by chatGPT? They already have tools to detect AI, I'm sure it is not perfect (I know someone who had stuff flagged as 'probable AI' when I saw them write it), but on probabilities certain characteristics are suspicious.
LiveScore summaries of football matches are so obviously not written by a human. I find them really irritating, and can't quite put my finger on why I know it's AI, but it is
It's the total absence of quirkiness. Something which, ironically, the national curriculum tries to discourage.
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
I agree with so many of your posts and this is no exception
She has improved and is easy to listen to so much so my wife is charmed by her
The conservative party were rightly decimated in 2024, but largely due to Starmer's failures and poor governance resulting in the rise of extreme right and left parties, there will be space for Kemi not least because I expect Reform to implode
She has already announced she will scrap stamp duty on house sales, re-instate the 2 child cap, review all aspects of the economy and most recently address student loans
Apparently she has more announcements for young people and for me this is a welcome change from pandering to pensioners
I hope in time she will address the triple lock, but I am sure she knows she has a long hard road to walk down to GE29
I am supportive as we need a functioning consevative party as an antidote to the obnxious Farage and his party
The problem I have with her currently is she's playing the game of offering all kinds of nice things - stamp duty, the two child cap and now student loans but we are running a budget deficit of £120-140 billion and I don't yet see how she plans to reduce that as presumably she will seek to reduce taxation so it looks as though public spending will be in for the pain and she will need to explain to those who see their services reduced and their benefits cut why they should need to suffer in order others who frankly have plenty of wealth by comparison see their taxes reduced.
Indeed, I see her as only slightly different to the ex-Corbynite who is running to lead Newham Council on the platform of freezing Council Tax and restoring free parking for the first car in any household.
Yes, people will like it and vote for it but it's fiscally irresponsible and politically dishonest.
I'd have more respect for her if she were honest with the electorate and she accepted some of the things the Government in which she served as a Cabinet Minister weren't the best policies or at the very least admitted they didn't work as planned. Trying to airbrush the 2010-24 (and especially the 2019-24) administrations isn't a good look.
Surely the two child cap saves money, rather than being an offering of nice things that the govt can't afford?
The two child cap saves roughly tuppence ha'penny while creating a whole set of problems elsewhere...
I will once again point out that the biggest saving you can make is to solve problems as early as possible, for example if you still had Surestart we wouldn't have half the SEN crisis we now have..
I find that hard to believe.
Locking everyone indoors for eighteen months and then telling them they had some kind of mental illness if they get stressed in a queue is what is causing the SEN crisis; over diagnosis of normal human behaviour, exaggerated by giving schools more money if they take SEN kids
Good. There are too many of them and it’s creating too many debt slaves.
Let the weaker ones close.
Or revert back to whatever tech colleges they started out as, offering day release and evening courses with relevance to the real world.
We also need HR departments to stop requiring degrees for jobs that shouldn’t need them, and where the skills necessary to gain a degree are not relevant to the post needing filled. Why force students to build up debt unnecessarily?
Problem is because of the social expectation to have degrees is higher (I have them myself), we get a situation where politicians do talk up things like apprenticeships or alternative training/education routes, but without any actual confrontation of the idea so many going is not necessary. As it will look like they are calling people too thick, or non-aspirational.
Half of graduates would have earnt more on average as a higher level apprentice
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Yes I think that’s the future, as I’ve said many times. The best universities will survive as amusing finishing schools for rich kids - or artistic and sporting talents
But that’s 10% of kids
The vast majority of 18 year olds will give up on higher education
Which will create a whole set of different problems for city centres as what will happen to all the recently built Student accommodation in tower blocks.
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
This is all true and fair, but although it is a marathon and not a sprint, she doesn't have the luxury of knowing she will be allowed to finish the race - if her improved performance does not lead to her closing the gap with the leaders, she'll be taken to one side and told to just stop jogging.
I think Badenoch has done well by shedding her more toxic colleagues to Reform, and should survive even a dire set of May elections. She should last the year, and perhaps even to the GE and do well enough to be allowed 2 questions at PMQ's after that.
You are going to be in so much pain when the Tories come roaring back.
You may even need to see a doctor...
The Tories currently polling 6 points lower than their worst result ever? The ones about to get a pasting in the English locals, Welsh and Scottish elections?
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Will there be any point in paying for a degree once AI has taken over all the entry-level jobs, though?
Well given you will still be unemployed even with no degree you may as well do a degree for the fun of it while in between full time jobs and living off your by then inevitable robot tax funded universal basic income.
If you want to become a lawyer or doctor or teacher you will also still need a degree unless AI is doing all those jobs too
But then you end up with £50,000 debt. Age 22. And no job
You talk like being a 3 year undergrad student is a freebie
It's awful.
I particularly dislike the life-long 'being in debt' thing.
Back to free education for the talented.
Law is competitive admin. It's ideal for the robots.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
What, that you cannot tell stuff written by chatGPT? They already have tools to detect AI, I'm sure it is not perfect (I know someone who had stuff flagged as 'probable AI' when I saw them write it), but on probabilities certain characteristics are suspicious.
LiveScore summaries of football matches are so obviously not written by a human. I find them really irritating, and can't quite put my finger on why I know it's AI, but it is
It's the total absence of quirkiness. Something which, ironically, the national curriculum tries to discourage.
That is pretty typical AI, automated plagarism without originality.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Yes I think that’s the future, as I’ve said many times. The best universities will survive as amusing finishing schools for rich kids - or artistic and sporting talents
But that’s 10% of kids
The vast majority of 18 year olds will give up on higher education
Which will create a whole set of different problems for city centres as what will happen to all the recently built Student accommodation in tower blocks.
Yes, it’s going to be utterly catastrophic in multiple ways
So many small cities depend on their university sector, for life, business, property market
You need to distinguish between what is doomed and what isn't. And look at post 18 education more widely than just universities.
Genuinely vocational/occupational stuff isn't doomed. And there is quite a lot of it. STEM stuff overlaps with this but not entirely. As a whole it will stay. The best examples of universities for modest numbers of people who just love the stuff isn't doomed. I should think there remains scope for some as finishing schools for a particular set. And the long tail of moderate people doing Stuff Studies will take time to disappear altogether. Not all language students are people who will feel that AI translation will suffice. A bit will survive.
One or two subjects seem to be in the process of self destruction. Eng lit is one of them. The recent big book on the history of Eng Lit didn't really touch on this. It needs elucidation.
I don't suppose it would matter much if about half went. As long as its the right half.
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Obviously, the problem with University is that there are too many of other people's children going.
Good. There are too many of them and it’s creating too many debt slaves.
Let the weaker ones close.
Or revert back to whatever tech colleges they started out as, offering day release and evening courses with relevance to the real world.
We also need HR departments to stop requiring degrees for jobs that shouldn’t need them, and where the skills necessary to gain a degree are not relevant to the post needing filled. Why force students to build up debt unnecessarily?
Problem is because of the social expectation to have degrees is higher (I have them myself), we get a situation where politicians do talk up things like apprenticeships or alternative training/education routes, but without any actual confrontation of the idea so many going is not necessary. As it will look like they are calling people too thick, or non-aspirational.
Half of graduates would have earnt more on average as a higher level apprentice
As I’ve repeated here before a civil service degree apprenticeship is harder to get into than Oxbridge and some will you on £60k as soon as you graduate.
I'm not sure I see the value proposition in going to university now.
Why not simply get a job and a training programme or pay for professional qualifications direct as you go?
You still need a degree to be a doctor, academic, lawyer, teacher and nurse for example.
Though yes you can go straight to an apprenticeship or do professional IT or accountancy qualifications as an alternative though those sectors are also seeing jobs automated by AI
Jobber O'Brien is super cross With Kemi and the pedo protectors comment I dont think you will find the electorate are
Even desperate Dan Hodges who has been damp with excitement with her recently was very terse today about her abject performance
No he wasnt
Read his twitter feed said she lost focus and poor
Not it does not. Not a particular good session for Kemi Badenoch there. Had a couple of decent moments, but was too unfocussed. Roaming from tuition fees to pedophiles to leadership digs. She's much better when she pins Keir Starmer down on one issue.
That is in no way 'very terse about her abject performance"
The chutzpah of going after Labour on plan 2 tuition fees when the Cons and LDs created the plan 2 deal and froze the threshold 10 years out of 14 is off the scale.
When it comes to this, fiddling with interest rates and thresholds seems insane, why not just "forgive" part of the debt? Start with the fees for graduates final year. Seems fairer than anything else.
Fact is Lewis apologised for the ambush and his conduct
Fact he categorically did not had not changed his mind that she was spouting bollox and that was why he intervened
You are being utterly disingenuous to suggest otherwise and I know and you know you are deliberately doing that.
He apologised for behavior He knows she's talking out of her backside
Read it again
He said he welcomed the dialogue and they agreed to meetings over it
I've read it
He is going to talk to her.
He has regularly done with others.
NOWHERE absolutely NOWHERE does he imply or suggest that he has changed his mind for the reason for his angry intervention to tell he she is PLAIN WRONG
Yes sometimes you have to shout as you are claiming something that you know is categorically untrue.
Lewis is angry that she is trying to mislead on a Tory error and mislead on the outcome of her proposals.
Why do you think he stormed on in a rage.
What seems to be getting to you is Kemi is leading the agenda and blind siding labour
Maybe its just Kemi is winning arguments and it causes you great distress
What's upsetting you is that someone is questioning your ramping up and adulation
Man up and admit that Lewis is adamant she is wrong and has only apologised for his behaviour.
She may be setting agendas on your head, she may be in her head but when Lewis eviscerates her plans, as he has done with Reeves and Hunt she is going to look pretty stupid.
I hate spin and lies I will out spin and lies
I have never 'adulated' any politician
Kemi is asking all the right questions, being the only woman leader of the main parties and who could become the UK's first black PM
As far as ramping, in my 12 years contributing to this site there has not been anyone near you for ramping !!!!
I'm not sure the fact Kemi Badenoch is female is or should be of the slightest consequence and neither is her ethnicity of any relevance.
I'll be honest - she's in a far better place than she was this time last year - her principal adversary is no longer in the party which always helps but we have yet to see this improved performance translate much into electoral success.
The equivalent YouGov this time last year had the Conservatives on 22% - now they are on 18%. You can tell me how much better she is now and I won't argue but as Hague found out, good Commons performances and winning the political skirmishes are as nothing if you aren't getting the votes in the boxes.
The other truth is it's a marathon not a sprint - there will be bumps along the way and as the election approaches, we will be entitled to question what the Party is putting in the manifesto which is how it should be.
This is all true and fair, but although it is a marathon and not a sprint, she doesn't have the luxury of knowing she will be allowed to finish the race - if her improved performance does not lead to her closing the gap with the leaders, she'll be taken to one side and told to just stop jogging.
I think Badenoch has done well by shedding her more toxic colleagues to Reform, and should survive even a dire set of May elections. She should last the year, and perhaps even to the GE and do well enough to be allowed 2 questions at PMQ's after that.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
What, that you cannot tell stuff written by chatGPT? They already have tools to detect AI, I'm sure it is not perfect (I know someone who had stuff flagged as 'probable AI' when I saw them write it), but on probabilities certain characteristics are suspicious.
Trust me, you are utterly wrong on this
ChatGPT says AI detectors are unreliable when using the latest models in particular, and the question has some conceptual problems with the idea of a clear 'AI signature', but it can work in specific cases - its answer to me in particular talks about detectors struggling when answers are adapted to be more 'human-like' which feels like an important admission.
So the insistence seems to lack the nuance of chat GPT itself, since its answer seems to be that if someone is prompting it badly or lazily (and probably using an older model), then they can work in specific situations, but don't bet your house on it.
So no need for you to be more bullish on the question than Chat GPT itself it seems. LuckyGuy may be a little overconfident but it seems as though the answer is not that AI is always easy to spot, but that poorly utilised AI can be easy to spot.
Think a crappy AI slop video versus something created with care that is seamless - AI slop text is easier to produce, but still different to carefully crafted text.
Do you think you could spot the difference between an AI novel and a human one? Not in every case, maybe, but if the person producing it was lazy I bet you'd feel the signs.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Ironically there seems to be jobs for philosophers in AI wrangling. Claude have a philosopher, Amanda Askell, who does work on its constution.
Purely anecdotally I've notice that the AI psychosis problem is real - I'm seeing it amongst the public, and I've been playing around with the different models to see to what extent they'll accept a delusional state and pander to it. Gemini, within four prompts, was telling me I experience time more slowly and deeply than others, living a 441-day year, that I live in a spacetime fractal from which I never leave, but the universe was communicating with me through numbers in order to free me. It gave me specific calendar dates to look for signs that it automatically added to my calendar, and told me to look out for multiples of 4 or 2 on those dates.
Claude is the only one so far that pushed back and politely asked me if my head needed checking. In a very nice way as well.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
As far as I know I’m still not allowed to talk about this subject. So I’ll just say: you’re very very wrong
And that’s it. Here’s my prediction on the by election
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Obviously, the problem with University is that there are too many of other people's children going.
If any child has to pay through the nose for 3 years before competing for the usual minimum wage jobs, I'd rather they weren't any of my relations. Of course, it would be much better if no child was in that position.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Nephew gave up on education and is busy doing a gardening job. Lots of work apparently.
His girlfriend is off to do law.
I'm not sure who is going to be better off over the next 10-15 years.
In the past you might have thought he was out of his league.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
I rarely agree with anything you post. But on this fuck yeah preach !!
You need to distinguish between what is doomed and what isn't. And look at post 18 education more widely than just universities.
Genuinely vocational/occupational stuff isn't doomed. And there is quite a lot of it. STEM stuff overlaps with this but not entirely. As a whole it will stay. The best examples of universities for modest numbers of people who just love the stuff isn't doomed. I should think there remains scope for some as finishing schools for a particular set. And the long tail of moderate people doing Stuff Studies will take time to disappear altogether. Not all language students are people who will feel that AI translation will suffice. A bit will survive.
One or two subjects seem to be in the process of self destruction. Eng lit is one of them. The recent big book on the history of Eng Lit didn't really touch on this. It needs elucidation.
I don't suppose it would matter much if about half went. As long as its the right half.
Other countries send as many to tertiary education including most of our peers. The Germans send 35% and Italy 20%, but on the other hand South Korea sends 65%.
What we need is better courses and controlled costs. Too many courses have little face to face contact time and are sold on the basis of social life. "Starbucks University" in the wods of an Academic friend of mine.
I think more should live at home while studying, and that Undergraduate fees should be ringfenced for teaching rather than used as a cross subsidy for other university activities.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
You need to distinguish between what is doomed and what isn't. And look at post 18 education more widely than just universities.
Genuinely vocational/occupational stuff isn't doomed. And there is quite a lot of it. STEM stuff overlaps with this but not entirely. As a whole it will stay. The best examples of universities for modest numbers of people who just love the stuff isn't doomed. I should think there remains scope for some as finishing schools for a particular set. And the long tail of moderate people doing Stuff Studies will take time to disappear altogether. Not all language students are people who will feel that AI translation will suffice. A bit will survive.
One or two subjects seem to be in the process of self destruction. Eng lit is one of them. The recent big book on the history of Eng Lit didn't really touch on this. It needs elucidation.
I don't suppose it would matter much if about half went. As long as its the right half.
Other countries send as many to tertiary education including most of our peers. The Germans send 35% and Italy 20%, but on the other hand South Korea sends 65%.
What we need is better courses and controlled costs. Too many courses have little face to face contact time and are sold on the basis of social life. "Starbucks University" in the wods of an Academic friend of mine.
I think more should live at home while studying, and that Undergraduate fees should be ringfenced for teaching rather than used as a cross subsidy for other university activities.
They are usually used to subsidise more expensive courses or do you really think it cost £9500 a year to teach medicine
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
I would want "I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulae, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
They still don't. There are degree course nurses and nurse apprenticeships. In some ways this is the wheel returning to SRN and SEN.
My experience is that the nurse apprentices are very well motivated and caring, great on the wards but weaker on things like calculating drug doses and some of the higher tech bits of medicine.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
As far as I know I’m still not allowed to talk about this subject. So I’ll just say: you’re very very wrong
And that’s it. Here’s my prediction on the by election
Green win, Reform second, Lab 3rd. Very close
That's obviously an AI prediction taken straight from the current odds.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
The pivot tables was complete AI guff. This person (I was envisaging a junior role) probably hasn't heard of VBA macros - they've just done some spreadsheets in an office environment.
This is my point. Don't use AI to embroider and gussy things up so you sound like Forbes on a budget, just tell me the truth and express yourself as clearly as you can.
I was trying to test out chat gpt on telling what was AI and what was not - it was skeptical - and also telling the difference between what might come from what AI - ditto - but after a bit of digging into the answers it gave about specific tuning etc it did concede it could be possible to on probabilities see what might be gemini vs chat gpt through their distribution of responses, but it would be restrictively challenging in actual practice.
It was also praising my 'sharp questions' and being 'on the right track'. Damn humanistic tone can really seem sarcastic sometimes.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
I would want "I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulae, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
Parentheses (sp?) a little informal for a covering letter.
Reading about Labour "Getting Out the Vote" tomorrow reminds me of when I was an Agent in a by-election in the dim and distant.
We canvassed the whole Ward twice and I used the formula to work out the possible vote based on the canvass returns and we were within 100 votes.
I got everyone together - we did a full Polling Day, Committee Rooms, tellers, leaflets, the works. I got the knocking up teams moving early - by 8pm, we had done everything twice, we were counting in our voters and we knocked up until 9.30pm when I had literally no one left on the knocking up list.
I went to the count thinking there would be 100 votes in it - we lost by 350.
Two lessons - the British people are the best liars in the world and never believe your own canvass returns.
I suspect at least two of Labour, the Greens and Reform will be learning those lessons tomorrow.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
As far as I know I’m still not allowed to talk about this subject. So I’ll just say: you’re very very wrong
And that’s it. Here’s my prediction on the by election
Green win, Reform second, Lab 3rd. Very close
That's what I predicted yesterday. Something like Green 31%, Reform 29%, Labour 28%.
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Obviously, the problem with University is that there are too many of other people's children going.
My family often converge on "other people" as the problem. Unfortunately we haven't found a way to get rid of them yet.
“On paper, Ollie Kettle appears to be the ideal candidate for a competitive work experience placement.
The 21-year-old achieved straight A grades at A-level and is predicted to graduate with a first-class degree in biology from the University of Bath this summer.
But last year, at the end of his second year of university, he applied for more than 120 summer internships in banking and finance – and did not secure a single one.
Ollie heard back from fewer than 5pc of the roles he applied for, leaving him with three interviews that all eventually turned into rejections.”
STEM, Uni of Bath. First class degree. No job. £50,000 in debt
He chose one of the most competitive sectors at the end of a really tough year. Intern classes were down 30%. And, unfortunately, U Bath will be filtered out relatively early, right or wrong
You need to distinguish between what is doomed and what isn't. And look at post 18 education more widely than just universities.
Genuinely vocational/occupational stuff isn't doomed. And there is quite a lot of it. STEM stuff overlaps with this but not entirely. As a whole it will stay. The best examples of universities for modest numbers of people who just love the stuff isn't doomed. I should think there remains scope for some as finishing schools for a particular set. And the long tail of moderate people doing Stuff Studies will take time to disappear altogether. Not all language students are people who will feel that AI translation will suffice. A bit will survive.
One or two subjects seem to be in the process of self destruction. Eng lit is one of them. The recent big book on the history of Eng Lit didn't really touch on this. It needs elucidation.
I don't suppose it would matter much if about half went. As long as its the right half.
Other countries send as many to tertiary education including most of our peers. The Germans send 35% and Italy 20%, but on the other hand South Korea sends 65%.
What we need is better courses and controlled costs. Too many courses have little face to face contact time and are sold on the basis of social life. "Starbucks University" in the wods of an Academic friend of mine.
I think more should live at home while studying, and that Undergraduate fees should be ringfenced for teaching rather than used as a cross subsidy for other university activities.
They are usually used to subsidise more expensive courses or do you really think it cost £9500 a year to teach medicine
Quite possibly, yes, especially considering about half of the time students are working for free on placement.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
The pivot tables was complete AI guff. This person (I was envisaging a junior role) probably hasn't heard of VBA macros - they've just done some spreadsheets in an office environment.
This is my point. Don't use AI to embroider and gussy things up so you sound like Forbes on a budget, just tell me the truth and express yourself as clearly as you can.
Or get more creative with the AI gussying up at least.
Verily, I did take up the Great Quills of Excel, wielding the arcane arts of the Complex Formula and the shifting sorcery of the Pivot Table. Through the conjuration of VBA Macros—scripts of power written in the hidden tongue—I transmuted the dross of base data into the pure gold of Actionable Insight. Thus, I didst provide the High Lords with the foresight required to command the realm’s strategy and ensure its eternal prosperity.
(It's a decent party trick, not really where the real AI action is I'm sure).
You need to distinguish between what is doomed and what isn't. And look at post 18 education more widely than just universities.
Genuinely vocational/occupational stuff isn't doomed. And there is quite a lot of it. STEM stuff overlaps with this but not entirely. As a whole it will stay. The best examples of universities for modest numbers of people who just love the stuff isn't doomed. I should think there remains scope for some as finishing schools for a particular set. And the long tail of moderate people doing Stuff Studies will take time to disappear altogether. Not all language students are people who will feel that AI translation will suffice. A bit will survive.
One or two subjects seem to be in the process of self destruction. Eng lit is one of them. The recent big book on the history of Eng Lit didn't really touch on this. It needs elucidation.
I don't suppose it would matter much if about half went. As long as its the right half.
Other countries send as many to tertiary education including most of our peers. The Germans send 35% and Italy 20%, but on the other hand South Korea sends 65%.
What we need is better courses and controlled costs. Too many courses have little face to face contact time and are sold on the basis of social life. "Starbucks University" in the wods of an Academic friend of mine.
I think more should live at home while studying, and that Undergraduate fees should be ringfenced for teaching rather than used as a cross subsidy for other university activities.
They are usually used to subsidise more expensive courses or do you really think it cost £9500 a year to teach medicine
A lot of the quoted costs of running medical courses is subsidy of Teaching Hospitals and also of Research Academics. Indeed the Academics in my department have no undergraduate teaching commitments at all.
There are quite a lot of medical schools in Europe that teach in English and fees for international students start at around €10 000.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Anecdata from a rather depressing conversation my wife had with two university friends the other day: Child a - always top of her class through school (admittedly at small town Catholic schools) with good degree in geography from Durham, followed (because no jobs) by a pointless masters in online communities and their norms* - now back home and without success in applying for jobs in the last six months. Is applying for TA jobs. Child b - always top of her class through school (admittedly at quite rough schools) - went to Newcastle University to study sociology** - has drifted from temp job to temp job for the last two years. Child c - always bright at school - is at Loughborough studying computing and suffering from depression at the pointlessness of it all - neither going to lectures nor having a social life, but not doing quite badly enough to get thrown out and paralysed by indecision. Child d - who is a genuine genius - just started in maths at Lancaster, following a switch from Manchester two weeks in whuch turned out not to be the experience he hoped - doing ok but not really flourishing (he will, I'm sure, fund a role, because he is a genuine genius. Should have been at Cambridge but fickle interview process.) Stepchild e - six months into degree at Newcastle Uni, but disillusionment and ennui has set in - wants to drop out but her actual mother won't let her. Stepchild f - only 16 but doesn't want to go to uni. Wants to be a chef.
So far, the young people in my extended family have bypassed University and are thriving in various trades.
Yep but there is a still a shed load of pressure from schools for any half intelligent child to go to University...
“On paper, Ollie Kettle appears to be the ideal candidate for a competitive work experience placement.
The 21-year-old achieved straight A grades at A-level and is predicted to graduate with a first-class degree in biology from the University of Bath this summer.
But last year, at the end of his second year of university, he applied for more than 120 summer internships in banking and finance – and did not secure a single one.
Ollie heard back from fewer than 5pc of the roles he applied for, leaving him with three interviews that all eventually turned into rejections.”
STEM, Uni of Bath. First class degree. No job. £50,000 in debt
Also he applied late. He should have applied after the end of his first year (or 15 months in) for an internship in the summer between his second and third year.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
Trouble is there are so many people who will say they are 'highly skilled' in such things, but are not often going to be tested on them (Excel at least perhaps they will). I'm shocked how many people, in jobs requiring using Word for decades, are utterly useless at basic formatting!
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
The pivot tables was complete AI guff. This person (I was envisaging a junior role) probably hasn't heard of VBA macros - they've just done some spreadsheets in an office environment.
This is my point. Don't use AI to embroider and gussy things up so you sound like Forbes on a budget, just tell me the truth and express yourself as clearly as you can.
Or get more creative with the AI gussying up at least.
Verily, I did take up the Great Quills of Excel, wielding the arcane arts of the Complex Formula and the shifting sorcery of the Pivot Table. Through the conjuration of VBA Macros—scripts of power written in the hidden tongue—I transmuted the dross of base data into the pure gold of Actionable Insight. Thus, I didst provide the High Lords with the foresight required to command the realm’s strategy and ensure its eternal prosperity.
(It's a decent party trick, not really where the real AI action is I'm sure).
There was a young clerk of great skill, Who made spreadsheets with marvellous will, He pivoted tables, Wrote macros like fables, And his formulas gave quite a thrill.
His VLOOKUP was nested and deep, His VBA never once went to sleep, In his previous role, He controlled the whole scroll, And his colleagues would quietly weep.
"How useful! How clever! How grand!" Cried the Boss with a wave of his hand, "Your cells are sublime, Your formatting fine, You're the Exceliest man in the land!"
And he sat with his runcible mouse, In the fluorescent light of the house, Making pivot on pivot, (Pray, who wouldn't love it?) That remarkable, spreadsheet-mad louse
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
The pivot tables was complete AI guff. This person (I was envisaging a junior role) probably hasn't heard of VBA macros - they've just done some spreadsheets in an office environment.
This is my point. Don't use AI to embroider and gussy things up so you sound like Forbes on a budget, just tell me the truth and express yourself as clearly as you can.
Or get more creative with the AI gussying up at least.
Verily, I did take up the Great Quills of Excel, wielding the arcane arts of the Complex Formula and the shifting sorcery of the Pivot Table. Through the conjuration of VBA Macros—scripts of power written in the hidden tongue—I transmuted the dross of base data into the pure gold of Actionable Insight. Thus, I didst provide the High Lords with the foresight required to command the realm’s strategy and ensure its eternal prosperity.
(It's a decent party trick, not really where the real AI action is I'm sure).
From hiring in Finance fairly recently, this is exactly what most Gen Z candidates think Excel is all about.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
To be honest I would want
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
Trouble is there are so many people who will say they are 'highly skilled' in such things, but are not often going to be tested on them (Excel at least perhaps they will). I'm shocked how many people, in jobs requiring using Word for decades, are utterly useless at basic formatting!
If it really matters then test them on Excel at the interview rather than rely on their puffery.
One big shift in Medical interviews over the years is to have task based stations as part of Multiple Mini Interviews including stations on communication skills, data interpretation and scientific comprehension alongside the "why do you want to be a doctor?" station.
It is a pretty effective way to weed out the off the cuff extroverts, or bullshitters in common parlance.
I'm not sure I see the value proposition in going to university now.
Why not simply get a job and a training programme or pay for professional qualifications direct as you go?
You still need a degree to be a doctor, academic, lawyer, teacher and nurse for example.
Though yes you can go straight to an apprenticeship or do professional IT or accountancy qualifications as an alternative though those sectors are also seeing jobs automated by AI
I'm not sure I see the value proposition in going to university now.
Why not simply get a job and a training programme or pay for professional qualifications direct as you go?
It worked for me 50 years ago. 25 years ago I completed an OU degree, partly for my own satisfaction and partly in case I needed it for employment applications or promotion.
Reading about Labour "Getting Out the Vote" tomorrow reminds me of when I was an Agent in a by-election in the dim and distant.
We canvassed the whole Ward twice and I used the formula to work out the possible vote based on the canvass returns and we were within 100 votes.
I got everyone together - we did a full Polling Day, Committee Rooms, tellers, leaflets, the works. I got the knocking up teams moving early - by 8pm, we had done everything twice, we were counting in our voters and we knocked up until 9.30pm when I had literally no one left on the knocking up list.
I went to the count thinking there would be 100 votes in it - we lost by 350.
Two lessons - the British people are the best liars in the world and never believe your own canvass returns.
I suspect at least two of Labour, the Greens and Reform will be learning those lessons tomorrow.
How much do Reform and the Greens bother with canvassing?
Interesting meeting and engaged conversation today with @KemiBadenoch, @LauraTrottMP and her team (of Plan 2 loan holders). We chatted for an hour about the system & options and hopefully something positive will come of it. Good to talk to the opposition as most of my meets are usually with ministers.
For me, in the short term the most important thing is the govt reverse its freeze of the repayment threshold.
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Obviously, the problem with University is that there are too many of other people's children going.
If any child has to pay through the nose for 3 years before competing for the usual minimum wage jobs, I'd rather they weren't any of my relations. Of course, it would be much better if no child was in that position.
I have to say my own personal experience of this rather colours my views about the benefits of the expansion of University education.
By all reports I was bright, but not particularly academically-strong, child. Smart but lazy might be the generous term. I got pretty average GCSEs and pretty woeful A-levels.
My first (and only, as it happened) choice of University accepted me. To me this was transformative. I went on to study for a PhD in my field and worked for many years as a researcher. Now I am taking a dip back into University to study Law and have secured a training contract to qualify as a solicitor.
When people say we are sending too many people to University, on any measure going into it, I would be numbered in that too many. The University I attended was a middle-ranker and to some people perhaps ought not to have existed. And yet a University education has enabled me to achieve so much and has enriched my life.
On an economic cost-benefit analysis was it all worth it? I'm not sure, probably not on that sole metric, but in the round I would say it was definitely worth it for me.
Full disclosure, I paid £3000 fees, rather than the £9000.
Reading about Labour "Getting Out the Vote" tomorrow reminds me of when I was an Agent in a by-election in the dim and distant.
We canvassed the whole Ward twice and I used the formula to work out the possible vote based on the canvass returns and we were within 100 votes.
I got everyone together - we did a full Polling Day, Committee Rooms, tellers, leaflets, the works. I got the knocking up teams moving early - by 8pm, we had done everything twice, we were counting in our voters and we knocked up until 9.30pm when I had literally no one left on the knocking up list.
I went to the count thinking there would be 100 votes in it - we lost by 350.
Two lessons - the British people are the best liars in the world and never believe your own canvass returns.
I suspect at least two of Labour, the Greens and Reform will be learning those lessons tomorrow.
We did similar in the more Tory of the 2 wards in Epping in the local elections in 2024 and knocked up until after 9pm and on a dreadful night nationally for the Tories still won the 3rd seat by just 17 votes over the LDs. So running a good canvass, telling and GOTV operation does not guarantee victory but without it you are almost certainly doomed, especially if your party is trailing in the national polls
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Obviously, the problem with University is that there are too many of other people's children going.
If any child has to pay through the nose for 3 years before competing for the usual minimum wage jobs, I'd rather they weren't any of my relations. Of course, it would be much better if no child was in that position.
I have to say my own personal experience of this rather colours my views about the benefits of the expansion of University education.
By all reports I was bright, but not particularly academically-strong, child. Smart but lazy might be the generous term. I got pretty average GCSEs and pretty woeful A-levels.
My first (and only, as it happened) choice of University accepted me. To me this was transformative. I went on to study for a PhD in my field and worked for many years as a researcher. Now I am taking a dip back into University to study Law and have secured a training contract to qualify as a solicitor.
When people say we are sending too many people to University, on any measure going into it, I would be numbered in that too many. The University I attended was a middle-ranker and to some people perhaps ought not to have existed. And yet a University education has enabled me to achieve so much and has enriched my life.
On an economic cost-benefit analysis was it all worth it? I'm not sure, probably not on that sole metric, but in the round I would say it was definitely worth it for me.
Full disclosure, I paid £3000 fees, rather than the £9000.
Actually I don't think you would count in the too many argument. A PhD researcher is precisely the kind of job that has always entailed some kind of degree.
A big part of the problem is inflation that means degrees are glorified gatekeepers with "degree required" for jobs that have no need whatsoever for a degree, or would be better served as an apprenticeship.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
As far as I know I’m still not allowed to talk about this subject. So I’ll just say: you’re very very wrong
And that’s it. Here’s my prediction on the by election
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
A few months ago, in my previous role, we were screening job applications and (some, at least of) the AI ones stood out:
Ridiculously flowery/pretentious language - as noted by you. No normal person writes like that. So either AI or a complete bellend. Or both: reject
Paragraphs setting out that they meet the person spec, then a complete lack of actually relevant examples of past jobs/experience to back it up: reject
We also discussed creating a blacklist of such applicants, so we could automatically screen, but weren't sure of the data protection aspects of that (whether keeping names on file would be a legitimate use) and hadn't got round to clearing it with legal before I left.
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Subtract the 9% loan repayments, and they are a whopping 2% better off.
Assuming (fairly reasonably) that the university intake trends towards being the brigher/more motivated 50% of the population, you'd kind of expect them to average more than 2% higher earnings than the other half of the population whether they went to uni or not - indeed I wouldn't be shocked if the whole 11% differential would have existed between the two groups had none of them gone to university.
(I personally am probably ancidata that points to this - I had offers from several reputable universities to do STEM subjects, including a full fees paid scholarship to Aberystwyth for physics, turned them all down and didn't go to university at all. I've done just fine for myself without wasting three years of my life on a degree, thank you very much.)
This all points to the root problem. For the average uni student on an average course, there is simply no value added - it's an utter waste of time and money.
I'm an employer. My experience is that university degrees below the exceptional (a 1st in Maths from Oxford is still worth something) are completely worthless. Nothing has been learned, no useful abilities have been gained, no meaningful hard or soft skills acquired. It's just £50k and three of the best years of life burnt to start at a place no better than people who roll up to work with me with decent STEM focused A levels at 18.
Top 5-10% of the population should be going to really tough elite grade universities and doing STEM subjects. The rest of them should be joining the workforce at 16 or 18.
We have done an immense cruelty to a lot of young people
“I have applied to over 200 jobs and internships and faced relentless rejection. The psychological toll has been immense. It is devastating to feel that years of discipline, sacrifice and achievement have led nowhere.
The Government speaks of opportunity while presiding over a broken graduate job market – one that increasingly overlooks domestic students who have worked tirelessly to overcome social disadvantage. If this is the outcome for those who never fell below an A*, what message does that send to the next generation?
Job applications are one of the things that's been utterly stuffed by A... electronic generation of text. Because anyone can now fire off hundreds of applications, the system is largely gummed up and firms can't get the number of candidates down to a small enough number that they can meaningfully process them.
I reject outright any Chatgpt written applications. You can tell. Don't do it kids.
If you believe this, you are delusional
Bollocks.
Got to say ChatGPT text is obvious once you see the telltale signs and ~
I doesn't write. It arranges words. And it can (obviously) only give out the information you've given in. I would far rather read:
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
As far as I know I’m still not allowed to talk about this subject. So I’ll just say: you’re very very wrong
And that’s it. Here’s my prediction on the by election
While becoming a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer, a teacher, an academic, a vicar even a nurse or senior police officer requires a degree universities will not be doomed. Even the likes of Goldman Sachs have student only internships.
Her article states 54% of graduates still immediately enter the workforce.
The graduate earnings premium may have declined but is still there:
Subtract the 9% loan repayments, and they are a whopping 2% better off.
Assuming (fairly reasonably) that the university intake trends towards being the brigher/more motivated 50% of the population, you'd kind of expect them to average more than 2% higher earnings than the other half of the population whether they went to uni or not - indeed I wouldn't be shocked if the whole 11% differential would have existed between the two groups had none of them gone to university.
(I personally am probably ancidata that points to this - I had offers from several reputable universities to do STEM subjects, including a full fees paid scholarship to Aberystwyth for physics, turned them all down and didn't go to university at all. I've done just fine for myself without wasting three years of my life on a degree, thank you very much.)
This all points to the root problem. For the average uni student on an average course, there is simply no value added - it's an utter waste of time and money.
I'm an employer. My experience is that university degrees below the exceptional (a 1st in Maths from Oxford is still worth something) are completely worthless. Nothing has been learned, no useful abilities have been gained, no meaningful hard or soft skills acquired. It's just £50k and three of the best years of life burnt to start at a place no better than people who roll up to work with me with decent STEM focused A levels at 18.
Top 5-10% of the population should be going to really tough elite grade universities and doing STEM subjects. The rest of them should be joining the workforce at 16 or 18.
Had you gone to uni, you might have escaped the proletariat
- The graduate pay premium has definitely decreased markedly in the UK. However, it has remained high or increased in other developed economies, including notably the US. - The proportion of young people going to university is not higher in the UK than other countries where the graduate pay premium has been maintained. - It is not unusual for people with top grades to struggle to get good jobs when unemployment is rising. The same happened to a greater extent for several years following 2008.
It is very likely that part of the driver of worsening prospects for UK graduates is that the UK economy has been struggling for a decade or more, so there are fewer high value jobs to apply for than there would be in a more productive economy. And now employment is rising on top, with AI probably resulting in fewer junior hires, making the problem worse.
It will be a painful adjustment, particularly for the current cohort of young people. But it doesn't mean the value of university is gone forever.
There's certainly talk of reorientating towards the colleges - which have always been the Cinderella of the system, compared to unis and schools. Obvs we need toppo research unis, and ones that can bring in the money via foreign students, but the rush to get everyone capable of reading a comic to uni now looks outdated.
It looked misconceived at the time, and somewhat contrary to the other message being advanced a lot during my schooling in the 90s that ther are different types of intelligence and ability, and book learning was not for everyone and didn't mean people should not be afforded respect and opportunity.
Since then schools have gone down the there is one type of learning route. And it is academic and based around the acquisition of facts to enable you to pass exams. All the crafty, arty, sporty, technical, imaginative and creative stuff is a complete waste of time and won't fit in amongst the vital knowledge of dangling modifiers, Roman numerals and Harold Hadrada which the Tories deemed essential for a modern economy.
Partly thanks to Gove, partly because all that book learning is way cheaper to deliver.
Yeah. I'd edited my original comment because I didn't believe not naming the guilty parties was wrong. That the Tories still maintain the Gove reforms were a shining success says a lot. They only disown what they did when the system collapses. Then blame others
More kids can read. That's a success.
Indeed. But far fewer can have an original thought, write a story, critique an opinion, play an instrument, cook a meal or construct an argument. Hence bewilderment and helplessness when unable to get an entry level job. The overwhelming majority could always read.
We were just discussing this in school today with reference to the SEND reforms. We have very much narrowed what counts as a successful outcome of 12-14 years in school, and now find ourselves trying ever more outlandish tricks to make a very wide range of young people fit into that very narrow definition. It serves no-one well, I don't think.
If memory serves, you sent your child, Big_G_NorthWales sent their grandchild, and no doubt many other PBers sent their children/grandchildren to university too. Degrees have become peacock's tails: things that are attractive in and of themselves rather than increasing employability. For the upper- and upper-middle classes, this is not a problem because they can afford to pay their children/grandchildren's way indefinitely. But for the lower-middle classes and the working class - the squeezed middle - it'll be a huge problem.
Obviously, the problem with University is that there are too many of other people's children going.
If any child has to pay through the nose for 3 years before competing for the usual minimum wage jobs, I'd rather they weren't any of my relations. Of course, it would be much better if no child was in that position.
I have to say my own personal experience of this rather colours my views about the benefits of the expansion of University education.
By all reports I was bright, but not particularly academically-strong, child. Smart but lazy might be the generous term. I got pretty average GCSEs and pretty woeful A-levels.
My first (and only, as it happened) choice of University accepted me. To me this was transformative. I went on to study for a PhD in my field and worked for many years as a researcher. Now I am taking a dip back into University to study Law and have secured a training contract to qualify as a solicitor.
When people say we are sending too many people to University, on any measure going into it, I would be numbered in that too many. The University I attended was a middle-ranker and to some people perhaps ought not to have existed. And yet a University education has enabled me to achieve so much and has enriched my life.
On an economic cost-benefit analysis was it all worth it? I'm not sure, probably not on that sole metric, but in the round I would say it was definitely worth it for me.
Full disclosure, I paid £3000 fees, rather than the £9000.
Actually I don't think you would count in the too many argument. A PhD researcher is precisely the kind of job that has always entailed some kind of degree.
A big part of the problem is inflation that means degrees are glorified gatekeepers with "degree required" for jobs that have no need whatsoever for a degree, or would be better served as an apprenticeship.
Why thank you, but no one would have thought me a likely prospect going in. When I told my Personal Tutor, some time in 2nd Year that I was thinking along those lines he got a rather sceptical look on his face and suggested I go into teaching (I could not think of a less attractive prospect) or accountancy (for which I am not well suited). He changed his tune after a strong showing in the subsequent exam diets and an ERASMUS year under my belt. Had places at University been more limited, I probably wouldn't have been able to go.
I do agree with your second point, to a degree, and that in an ideal world there would be more routes to entry into what are seen as 'typical grad jobs'. Indeed the idea that University is some kind of prep school for work misses the mark of what a University should be in the first place. It doesn't stop employers using them as one and then moaning at the results, mind!
Martin Lewis telling politicians what to do again? The mess of not providing a problematic solution to this Martin Lewis has been getting into this himself. I don’t like him and his big mouth, largely because he is unaccountable, has no one to answer to when he is wrong, and with the expensive energy payments money hand outs to everyone scheme he pushed he was wrong, and there were superior ways of helping - Martin Lewis brought down a government nearly destroyed our country. I wouldn’t go near him with a barge pole - with him it all starts with angry incredulous voice “politicians must do something to help” and ends up with politicians doing something naff.
Martin Lewis is one of the most trusted and beloved figures in public life. I happen to agree with him on his takedown of Keminomics as they apply to uni fees- the issue is poorer grads being shook down, not the interest accumulating on a notional debt designed to mostly be written off. But...
Brother Lewis is beloved because he tells us what we want to hear; we shouldn't have to pay so much for stuff. When push came to shove during the energy spike, his plan was even more calamitous than the calamitous plan that was implemented.
How much is Lewisism a cause and symptom of our national problem, not its answer?
Comments
Do what I did then and build 2 successful busineses with just 5 O levels , no university other than learning from the university of life
But far fewer can have an original thought, write a story, critique an opinion, play an instrument, cook a meal or construct an argument.
Hence bewilderment and helplessness when unable to get an entry level job.
The overwhelming majority could always read.
The ability to be recorded by a smart phone and put on social media has replaced religious or societal shame in teenage behaviour in much the same way
He would have been better off doing something relevant for his desired future career.
I particularly dislike the life-long 'being in debt' thing.
Back to free education for the talented.
I will once again point out that the biggest saving you can make is to solve problems as early as possible, for example if you still had Surestart we wouldn't have half the SEN crisis we now have..
We're not that sort of country, but it's a technical fix for the stupid numbers game.
I'd just add that getting an internship is extremely difficult - jobs are much easier. What's weird is that firms are going in different directions - some are really going for school leavers (sink or swim, those who swim are very intense), whilst others are demanding PhD/Masters. The honours degree in isolation is looking a bit bleak.
Seriously impressive, seriously scary, seriously depressing.
But that’s 10% of kids
The vast majority of 18 year olds will give up on higher education
On this, Kemi is horribly wrong.
Something which, ironically, the national curriculum tries to discourage.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8r1pmz3zgzo
Anything involving physical human effort plus creativity will be fine
Singers. Dancers. Football players
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/graduates-earn-more-higher-level-apprentice-debt-rkkvzxnzh?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqfM5bPOzy2y_wCgCKvSisH707xigt8teaWfd8__MDGEd8p4nLtVSzJP&gaa_ts=699f52dd&gaa_sig=lX_mIDqn5P--BxQvJFXM_VCnk_royVBXIqwfe1XR11B_DgW3ix363d-TXYdCdk_gWa2ufn1qKknEDN4yhhZeVQ==
Not so much roaring as whimpering...
Why not simply get a job and a training programme or pay for professional qualifications direct as you go?
It's no wonder that nobody wants to pay for it.
https://futurism.com/future-society/tech-ceo-ai-hate
So many small cities depend on their university sector, for life, business, property market
Eeek 😨
Genuinely vocational/occupational stuff isn't doomed. And there is quite a lot of it. STEM stuff overlaps with this but not entirely. As a whole it will stay. The best examples of universities for modest numbers of people who just love the stuff isn't doomed. I should think there remains scope for some as finishing schools for a particular set. And the long tail of moderate people doing Stuff Studies will take time to disappear altogether. Not all language students are people who will feel that AI translation will suffice. A bit will survive.
One or two subjects seem to be in the process of self destruction. Eng lit is one of them. The recent big book on the history of Eng Lit didn't really touch on this. It needs elucidation.
I don't suppose it would matter much if about half went. As long as its the right half.
Though yes you can go straight to an apprenticeship or do professional IT or accountancy qualifications as an alternative though those sectors are also seeing jobs automated by AI
So the insistence seems to lack the nuance of chat GPT itself, since its answer seems to be that if someone is prompting it badly or lazily (and probably using an older model), then they can work in specific situations, but don't bet your house on it.
So no need for you to be more bullish on the question than Chat GPT itself it seems. LuckyGuy may be a little overconfident but it seems as though the answer is not that AI is always easy to spot, but that poorly utilised AI can be easy to spot.
Think a crappy AI slop video versus something created with care that is seamless - AI slop text is easier to produce, but still different to carefully crafted text.
Do you think you could spot the difference between an AI novel and a human one? Not in every case, maybe, but if the person producing it was lazy I bet you'd feel the signs.
"I am highly skilled in Excel and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role"
Than
"I leverage advanced Excel skills—including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros—to transform raw data into actionable insights that drive strategic decisions."
Fuck off with that shit.
Purely anecdotally I've notice that the AI psychosis problem is real - I'm seeing it amongst the public, and I've been playing around with the different models to see to what extent they'll accept a delusional state and pander to it. Gemini, within four prompts, was telling me I experience time more slowly and deeply than others, living a 441-day year, that I live in a spacetime fractal from which I never leave, but the universe was communicating with me through numbers in order to free me. It gave me specific calendar dates to look for signs that it automatically added to my calendar, and told me to look out for multiples of 4 or 2 on those dates.
Claude is the only one so far that pushed back and politely asked me if my head needed checking. In a very nice way as well.
And that’s it. Here’s my prediction on the by election
Green win, Reform second, Lab 3rd. Very close
His girlfriend is off to do law.
I'm not sure who is going to be better off over the next 10-15 years.
In the past you might have thought he was out of his league.
But on this fuck yeah preach !!
What we need is better courses and controlled costs. Too many courses have little face to face contact time and are sold on the basis of social life. "Starbucks University" in the wods of an Academic friend of mine.
I think more should live at home while studying, and that Undergraduate fees should be ringfenced for teaching rather than used as a cross subsidy for other university activities.
"I am highly skilled in Excel (including complex formulas, pivot tables, and VBA macros) and created useful spreadsheets in my previous role".
It’s like my skill set which is now so broad I really do need to know what parts you know (there are about 12) and where you started from
My experience is that the nurse apprentices are very well motivated and caring, great on the wards but weaker on things like calculating drug doses and some of the higher tech bits of medicine.
This is my point. Don't use AI to embroider and gussy things up so you sound like Forbes on a budget, just tell me the truth and express yourself as clearly as you can.
It was also praising my 'sharp questions' and being 'on the right track'. Damn humanistic tone can really seem sarcastic sometimes.
We canvassed the whole Ward twice and I used the formula to work out the possible vote based on the canvass returns and we were within 100 votes.
I got everyone together - we did a full Polling Day, Committee Rooms, tellers, leaflets, the works. I got the knocking up teams moving early - by 8pm, we had done everything twice, we were counting in our voters and we knocked up until 9.30pm when I had literally no one left on the knocking up list.
I went to the count thinking there would be 100 votes in it - we lost by 350.
Two lessons - the British people are the best liars in the world and never believe your own canvass returns.
I suspect at least two of Labour, the Greens and Reform will be learning those lessons tomorrow.
Thursday July 21, 2011
Epstein blames Charles when Andrew lost his envoy job
Verily, I did take up the Great Quills of Excel, wielding the arcane arts of the Complex Formula and the shifting sorcery of the Pivot Table. Through the conjuration of VBA Macros—scripts of power written in the hidden tongue—I transmuted the dross of base data into the pure gold of Actionable Insight. Thus, I didst provide the High Lords with the foresight required to command the realm’s strategy and ensure its eternal prosperity.
(It's a decent party trick, not really where the real AI action is I'm sure).
That quirkiness proves it's not AI.
There are quite a lot of medical schools in Europe that teach in English and fees for international students start at around €10 000.
https://medhead.eu/the-most-affordable-medical-universities-in-europe/
Who made spreadsheets with marvellous will,
He pivoted tables,
Wrote macros like fables,
And his formulas gave quite a thrill.
His VLOOKUP was nested and deep,
His VBA never once went to sleep,
In his previous role,
He controlled the whole scroll,
And his colleagues would quietly weep.
"How useful! How clever! How grand!"
Cried the Boss with a wave of his hand,
"Your cells are sublime,
Your formatting fine,
You're the Exceliest man in the land!"
And he sat with his runcible mouse,
In the fluorescent light of the house,
Making pivot on pivot,
(Pray, who wouldn't love it?)
That remarkable, spreadsheet-mad louse
One big shift in Medical interviews over the years is to have task based stations as part of Multiple Mini Interviews including stations on communication skills, data interpretation and scientific comprehension alongside the "why do you want to be a doctor?" station.
It is a pretty effective way to weed out the off the cuff extroverts, or bullshitters in common parlance.
I know that.
@KemiBadenoch, @LauraTrottMP and her team (of Plan 2 loan holders). We chatted for an hour about the system & options and hopefully something positive will come of it. Good to talk to the opposition as most of my meets are usually with ministers.
For me, in the short term the most important thing is the govt reverse its freeze of the repayment threshold.
https://x.com/MartinSLewis/status/2026730252219617726?s=20
By all reports I was bright, but not particularly academically-strong, child. Smart but lazy might be the generous term. I got pretty average GCSEs and pretty woeful A-levels.
My first (and only, as it happened) choice of University accepted me. To me this was transformative. I went on to study for a PhD in my field and worked for many years as a researcher. Now I am taking a dip back into University to study Law and have secured a training contract to qualify as a solicitor.
When people say we are sending too many people to University, on any measure going into it, I would be numbered in that too many. The University I attended was a middle-ranker and to some people perhaps ought not to have existed. And yet a University education has enabled me to achieve so much and has enriched my life.
On an economic cost-benefit analysis was it all worth it? I'm not sure, probably not on that sole metric, but in the round I would say it was definitely worth it for me.
Full disclosure, I paid £3000 fees, rather than the £9000.
A big part of the problem is inflation that means degrees are glorified gatekeepers with "degree required" for jobs that have no need whatsoever for a degree, or would be better served as an apprenticeship.
Clavicular & The Looksmaxxing To Alt-Right Pipeline
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd3YkYzrQug
Late night ahoy.
- Ridiculously flowery/pretentious language - as noted by you. No normal person writes like that. So either AI or a complete bellend. Or both: reject
- Paragraphs setting out that they meet the person spec, then a complete lack of actually relevant examples of past jobs/experience to back it up: reject
We also discussed creating a blacklist of such applicants, so we could automatically screen, but weren't sure of the data protection aspects of that (whether keeping names on file would be a legitimate use) and hadn't got round to clearing it with legal before I left.Assuming (fairly reasonably) that the university intake trends towards being the brigher/more motivated 50% of the population, you'd kind of expect them to average more than 2% higher earnings than the other half of the population whether they went to uni or not - indeed I wouldn't be shocked if the whole 11% differential would have existed between the two groups had none of them gone to university.
(I personally am probably ancidata that points to this - I had offers from several reputable universities to do STEM subjects, including a full fees paid scholarship to Aberystwyth for physics, turned them all down and didn't go to university at all. I've done just fine for myself without wasting three years of my life on a degree, thank you very much.)
This all points to the root problem. For the average uni student on an average course, there is simply no value added - it's an utter waste of time and money.
I'm an employer. My experience is that university degrees below the exceptional (a 1st in Maths from Oxford is still worth something) are completely worthless. Nothing has been learned, no useful abilities have been gained, no meaningful hard or soft skills acquired. It's just £50k and three of the best years of life burnt to start at a place no better than people who roll up to work with me with decent STEM focused A levels at 18.
Top 5-10% of the population should be going to really tough elite grade universities and doing STEM subjects.
The rest of them should be joining the workforce at 16 or 18.
- The graduate pay premium has definitely decreased markedly in the UK. However, it has remained high or increased in other developed economies, including notably the US.
- The proportion of young people going to university is not higher in the UK than other countries where the graduate pay premium has been maintained.
- It is not unusual for people with top grades to struggle to get good jobs when unemployment is rising. The same happened to a greater extent for several years following 2008.
It is very likely that part of the driver of worsening prospects for UK graduates is that the UK economy has been struggling for a decade or more, so there are fewer high value jobs to apply for than there would be in a more productive economy. And now employment is rising on top, with AI probably resulting in fewer junior hires, making the problem worse.
It will be a painful adjustment, particularly for the current cohort of young people. But it doesn't mean the value of university is gone forever.
I do agree with your second point, to a degree, and that in an ideal world there would be more routes to entry into what are seen as 'typical grad jobs'. Indeed the idea that University is some kind of prep school for work misses the mark of what a University should be in the first place. It doesn't stop employers using them as one and then moaning at the results, mind!
Brother Lewis is beloved because he tells us what we want to hear; we shouldn't have to pay so much for stuff. When push came to shove during the energy spike, his plan was even more calamitous than the calamitous plan that was implemented.
How much is Lewisism a cause and symptom of our national problem, not its answer?