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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
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.
What if they want to be a history teacher or a lawyer? They will still need degrees in those subjects.
Though yes I agree the top 20-40% percentile of the population should be looking more towards apprenticeships or starting their own businesses (though you can of course do degree apprenticeships too now)
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
“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
Why? Asking for a friend. Not Russell group? Being a top ten uni not good enough?
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
I won't be surprised if there is a recount.
Late night ahoy.
A three-way recount would be juicy
Even better, add in the Tories and the Lib Dems requiring a recount to save their deposits.
Mind blown about the early vote in Texas. TX Dems may outvote the GOP for the 1st time in a midterm primary since 2002!
This indicates they're well on their way to having higher primary turnout nationally & since 06 the party w/ higher primary turnout won the House every time.
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."
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.
I'm not working in the field of my first degree, nor even my first PhD.
Had I not gone to uni I hope I would have got some technical job and worked my way up. But maybe I'd have got stuck in office/admin jobs like my dad. Uni definitely opened opportunities to me and each of my jobs depended on the previous qualification. But I paid no fees (2000 intake, but a poor enough family to be exempt) and I'm less sure of the cost-benefit analysis under current fees!
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
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.
What if they want to be a history teacher or a lawyer? They will still need degrees in those subjects.
Though yes I agree the top 20-40% percentile of the population should be looking more towards apprenticeships or starting their own businesses (though you can of course do degree apprenticeships too now)
Intrinsically, you don't need a degree to do either- you can do a law conversion course (pay for it) and then grab a training contract. And you don't "need" a history degree to teach history, but do a PGCE.
I accept for doctors, dentists etc and engineers you absolutely do want degrees.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
Good point, thinking critically is a well known cause of blindness
- 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.
When I went to Uni in the early eighties there were no fees and a minimum grant, but on the other hand basic rate income tax was 30 percent, so not very different to what a current graduate pays with a student loan.
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
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.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
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".
If anyone said "Excel is a load of old bollocks. Bring back Lotus 123." I would hire them on the spot.
Lose - Andy Burnham would have won the seat as the candidate
I am narrowly on a labour hold
My guess is that Labour comes third having had their vote squeezed by the Greens. If that happens Burnham is going to have Starmer in a world of pain.
Fortunately Burnham is not in the HoC to personally benefit from Starmer's world of pain.
The pressure to get him there will be immense and this bye election will be pointed to as to why Starmer was wrong to stop him.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a huge Burnham fan. He was a terrible Minister in the last government and there is little real evidence that he has learned much since. But Labour have looked around in despair for an alternative to Starmer and not found anyone in their near 400 ranks who looks better. Burnham will become the alternative around which the disgruntled and desperate can coalesce. And more than 200 of those MPs are going to be pretty desperate.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Really enjoying the juxtaposition of these two posts one above the other.
What do you make of the SEND reforms?
I'm not sure (to be honest I haven't had time to absorb the details).
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
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".
If anyone said "Excel is a load of old bollocks. Bring back Lotus 123." I would hire them on the spot.
Lotus 123 was great. It did what spreadsheets were meant to do.
90% of Excel functions should have a health warning and a suggestion that you should be using something else.
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
I'll bite, as I used a vlookup today. @Ratters , what should I be doing instead?
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
For a lot of people its just a tool and they know what they need to know and aren't curious to find out more than they need to.
One that amuses me is the amount of people who know "don't use copy and paste on this file, it breaks it" but don't know how to use paste values.
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".
If anyone said "Excel is a load of old bollocks. Bring back Lotus 123." I would hire them on the spot.
Lotus 123 was great. It did what spreadsheets were meant to do.
90% of Excel functions should have a health warning and a suggestion that you should be using something else.
I spent a little time with claude code over xmas re-creating a cli Lotus-123 with just the functionality I needed and nothing else. Quite blissful.
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
I'll bite, as I used a vlookup today. Ratters , what should I be doing instead?
Labour won't care if their ruthless dubious barcharts and tactical voting leaflet recommendations see them scrape home tomorrow and beat Reform and squeeze the Greens. Unless outright lies difficult to prove fraud in court
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.
What if they want to be a history teacher or a lawyer? They will still need degrees in those subjects.
Though yes I agree the top 20-40% percentile of the population should be looking more towards apprenticeships or starting their own businesses (though you can of course do degree apprenticeships too now)
Intrinsically, you don't need a degree to do either- you can do a law conversion course (pay for it) and then grab a training contract. And you don't "need" a history degree to teach history, but do a PGCE.
I accept for doctors, dentists etc and engineers you absolutely do want degrees.
You can't do a law conversion course without an undergraduate course in a non law subject first, hence the PGDL stands for Post Graduate Diploma in Law.
You also have to have a degree to do a PGCE ie Post Graduate Certificate in Education.
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
I'll bite, as I used a vlookup today. Ratters , what should I be doing instead?
Index and match.
Thanks. Having looked into it I can't see any benefits of index and match over vlookup for my purposes (which, admittedly, are very specific: converting a raw exam score on a past exam paper into a grade based on the grade boundaries for that paper. The raw score is always the left hand column and each time a new exam paper comes out we just add a column to the right and copy over the vlookup).
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
For a lot of people its just a tool and they know what they need to know and aren't curious to find out more than they need to.
One that amuses me is the amount of people who know "don't use copy and paste on this file, it breaks it" but don't know how to use paste values.
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
I'll bite, as I used a vlookup today. Ratters , what should I be doing instead?
Index and match.
Or Xlookup. Which is relatively new, and essentially replaces the simple (one dimensional) index and match function.
To maxh, Vlookup fails as soon as anyone inserts a column or does anything. Index and match; or Xlookup, both avoid that.
I appreciate this is still imperfect, and the coders among us would prefer we send any data manipulation task to the dev team to work on for six months, rather than do them in five minutes.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
Much of the present authority in this country is statist, globalist and leftist.
I don't see much challenge to that from anything coming out of universities.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Really enjoying the juxtaposition of these two posts one above the other.
What do you make of the SEND reforms?
I'm not sure (to be honest I haven't had time to absorb the details).
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
You?
Edited as posted early by mistake.
Agree with that. I do think we need to reform the curriculum. Make it broader and less didactic. I also think we need to look at support staff. They are the one's desperately in need of more training. They are the one's who bear the brunt of the most dysregulated moments. Highly trained, and adequately paid, SEND HLTA's are what is needed in abundance with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. So that they can't be pulled off their job to cover for Mr Johnson on GCSE English to go on a course. And give them the authority to make decisions. Start having decisions made and meetings held with and by people who work with them on a daily basis. Treat them as professionals equal to QTS. And adequate facilities. Sensory classrooms. Individual timetables. All of this costs money though.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
The PB massiv seem to be keen on returning university education to the wealthiest 7%.
Keep the scumbag filth down where they belong. Keep social mobility in its box.
Sod Starmer/Maandelson. This stuff is huge. WTF is going on? Is it SNP capture of all Scottish institutions?
The problem is that in Scotland the de jure Attorney-General is also the Director of Public Prosecutions.
When I first started working back in 2000 I was told not only did I need act with utmost integrity at all times, the perception also needed to reflect that.
This is the sort of behaviour I'd expect from the Trump administration.
Don’t worry. There are plenty of people with no legal knowledge who will be happy to comment.
*raises hand*. I think the guardian article actually does a half-decent job of explaining the underlying issue here. I quite like the weird quirks of the legal and political system up here (and anywhere else) but sometimes they do beg some questions.
Oh. And an end to age based key stages wouldn't go amiss. If a child can't read or count to an adequate standard they don't move up till they can. If they still can't then we explore other options. Rather than letting them drown in Secondary. And try to take everyone with them. Or just refuse school altogether.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
Much of the present authority in this country is statist, globalist and leftist.
I don't see much challenge to that from anything coming out of universities.
Good God. The leader of the free world is a fascist and the right are in the ascendency in Europe. Oh and the media , be that press, broadcast or social are wholly owned by the right.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Really enjoying the juxtaposition of these two posts one above the other.
What do you make of the SEND reforms?
I'm not sure (to be honest I haven't had time to absorb the details).
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
You?
Edited as posted early by mistake.
Agree with that. I do think we need to reform the curriculum. Make it broader and less didactic. I also think we need to look at support staff. They are the one's desperately in need of more training. They are the one's who bear the brunt of the most dysregulated moments. Highly trained, and adequately paid, SEND HLTA's are what is needed in abundance with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. So that they can't be pulled off their job to cover for Mr Johnson on GCSE English to go on a course. And give them the authority to make decisions. Start having decisions made and meetings held with and by people who work with them on a daily basis. Treat them as professionals equal to QTS. And adequate facilities. Sensory classrooms. Individual timetables. All of this costs money though.
Quite apart from the social, family and individual benefits of improved SEND education, I suspect that in the longer run it pays for itself too by producing better adjusted adults that escape being permanent cast offs in one or other form of government supervision.
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my 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?
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
To deliberately miss the point, anyone still using vlookup in excel, frankly, deserves to be fired and replaced with AI.
I work with a lot of office admin people - and 90-95% of them never knew how to do vlookup or macro's in the first place.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
For a lot of people its just a tool and they know what they need to know and aren't curious to find out more than they need to.
One that amuses me is the amount of people who know "don't use copy and paste on this file, it breaks it" but don't know how to use paste values.
I get that it's just a tool - but I suppose I'm puzzled (by my nature) as to the lack of curiosity. If I spend 8hrs a day in one computer program - I couldn't help but find every effing thing it could do so that I could be lazy.
I remember doing a temp data-entry job back in the late 80s. A couple of us figured out that the IBM terminal keyboards had built-in macro recorders. So we were getting through about 10x the work of everyone else - even though we kept explaining 'this turns the job into a pure doss'.
Thankfully for Britain, those old fashioned terminals were replaced at great expense by Windows PC's which didn't offer the same facility (even the old 'recorder' app was blocked if we tried). So we 'levelled down' to average again.
Sod Starmer/Maandelson. This stuff is huge. WTF is going on? Is it SNP capture of all Scottish institutions?
The problem is that in Scotland the de jure Attorney-General is also the Director of Public Prosecutions.
When I first started working back in 2000 I was told not only did I need act with utmost integrity at all times, the perception also needed to reflect that.
This is the sort of behaviour I'd expect from the Trump administration.
I agree that the roles should be separated. It’s a reserved matter though, from the original devolution settlement. It needs legislation at Westminster to change it.
I was looking at this this afternoon on my phone. It just leaps out as odd, the system allows to be gamekeeper and poacher at the same time? Or better put than that, the nation’s game keeper, in role for all the parliament and all the party’s, in for the country, yet somehow acceptable to be in position to put your own party first and foremost, whatever coverup or “partial” advice is best for your own leader and administration, you wear both wigs, in both gowns, the impartial and partial one?
Does anyone think Labour will win the by-election tomorrow?
No. It's your boy Goodwin or the Greens.
Otherwise known as between Scylla and Charybdis. But I sadly agree.
Evening, PB campers.
With, ironically, Angeliki Stogia as the only Greek candidate of the three. She hasn't had a particularly high profile, with the press being much more interested in Goodwin and Soencer.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Really enjoying the juxtaposition of these two posts one above the other.
What do you make of the SEND reforms?
I'm not sure (to be honest I haven't had time to absorb the details).
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
You?
Edited as posted early by mistake.
Agree with that. I do think we need to reform the curriculum. Make it broader and less didactic. I also think we need to look at support staff. They are the one's desperately in need of more training. They are the one's who bear the brunt of the most dysregulated moments. Highly trained, and adequately paid, SEND HLTA's are what is needed in abundance with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. So that they can't be pulled off their job to cover for Mr Johnson on GCSE English to go on a course. And give them the authority to make decisions. Start having decisions made and meetings held with and by people who work with them on a daily basis. Treat them as professionals equal to QTS. And adequate facilities. Sensory classrooms. Individual timetables. All of this costs money though.
Quite apart from the social, family and individual benefits of improved SEND education, I suspect that in the longer run it pays for itself too by producing better adjusted adults that escape being permanent cast offs in one or other form of government supervision.
In the long run, yes.
After all, the shitty consequences of the version of austerity we voted for in 2010 have only really become clear in the last few years. (And fixing things will lead to improves in 2035-40 or so.)
In that long run, we won't all be dead, but a recently decisive cohort of the electorate mostly will be.
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.
Given you are going to end up as a lawyer, can we really say society benefited from your 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:
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
The PB massiv seem to be keen on returning university education to the wealthiest 7%.
Keep the scumbag filth down where they belong. Keep social mobility in its box.
I don't know whether I'm in the bloc you mention but far from being anti-university I'm anti young people getting into huge debt with no prospects to make it worthwhile.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Really enjoying the juxtaposition of these two posts one above the other.
What do you make of the SEND reforms?
I'm not sure (to be honest I haven't had time to absorb the details).
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
You?
Edited as posted early by mistake.
Agree with that. I do think we need to reform the curriculum. Make it broader and less didactic. I also think we need to look at support staff. They are the one's desperately in need of more training. They are the one's who bear the brunt of the most dysregulated moments. Highly trained, and adequately paid, SEND HLTA's are what is needed in abundance with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. So that they can't be pulled off their job to cover for Mr Johnson on GCSE English to go on a course. And give them the authority to make decisions. Start having decisions made and meetings held with and by people who work with them on a daily basis. Treat them as professionals equal to QTS. And adequate facilities. Sensory classrooms. Individual timetables. All of this costs money though.
Quite apart from the social, family and individual benefits of improved SEND education, I suspect that in the longer run it pays for itself too by producing better adjusted adults that escape being permanent cast offs in one or other form of government supervision.
Absolutely. Some of the kids I work with or have worked with are phenomenally gifted. I've had ones who valet cars, grow and sell veg and raise chickens and perform motor vehicle maintenance at the age of 13/14. But they are statutorily obliged to be seated at a desk "accessing the curriculum". Despite the fact that they can't read. And have long since given up any idea that they could learn. Rather than having their special interests nurtured and appreciated.
I was looking at this this afternoon on my phone. It just leaps out as odd, the system allows to be gamekeeper and poacher at the same time? Or better put than that, the nation’s game keeper, in role for all the parliament and all the party’s, in for the country, yet somehow acceptable to be in position to put your own party first and foremost, whatever coverup or “partial” advice is best for your own leader and administration, you wear both wigs, in both gowns, the impartial and partial one?
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
The PB massiv seem to be keen on returning university education to the wealthiest 7%.
Keep the scumbag filth down where they belong. Keep social mobility in its box.
I don't know whether I'm in the bloc you mention but far from being anti-university I'm anti young people getting into huge debt with no prospects to make it worthwhile.
The rot set in with Blair's 50% target, which led to grade inflation and the destruction of the filter mechanism that a properly classified degree offered. Now on top of that there's AI
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.
Given you are going to end up as a lawyer, can we really say society benefited from your education?
Arguably it delayed this sad outcome. And so was worth every penny.
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
The PB massiv seem to be keen on returning university education to the wealthiest 7%.
Keep the scumbag filth down where they belong. Keep social mobility in its box.
That is not it in the slightest and does a disservice to the entire argument. A return to a very small group would not be positive, but there are problems with the system as set up, and the encouragement to a path that may not be for the best for some who end up there given the rewards, though present, are not as grand as they once were.
Dismissing it so casually ignores the genuine cracks in the system, the frustrations it can cause which notably included the point that it can be hard to recruit people who deserve a shot despite no university education, because it is sometimes arbitrarily demanded.
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
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. Started a career. There were a lot more opportunities for non-graduates then, just as there were job opportunities for less-than-mediocre people.
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
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
Yes, a large part of why the populist right is so anti-university is because they do not want a population that thinks critically and challenges authority. If any one is to go at all it is for technical skills or to do Business Studies.
They have no souls.
If everyone thought critically, nobody would believe the small boats nonsense.
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Really enjoying the juxtaposition of these two posts one above the other.
What do you make of the SEND reforms?
I'm not sure (to be honest I haven't had time to absorb the details).
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
You?
Edited as posted early by mistake.
Agree with that. I do think we need to reform the curriculum. Make it broader and less didactic. I also think we need to look at support staff. They are the one's desperately in need of more training. They are the one's who bear the brunt of the most dysregulated moments. Highly trained, and adequately paid, SEND HLTA's are what is needed in abundance with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. So that they can't be pulled off their job to cover for Mr Johnson on GCSE English to go on a course. And give them the authority to make decisions. Start having decisions made and meetings held with and by people who work with them on a daily basis. Treat them as professionals equal to QTS. And adequate facilities. Sensory classrooms. Individual timetables. All of this costs money though.
Quite apart from the social, family and individual benefits of improved SEND education, I suspect that in the longer run it pays for itself too by producing better adjusted adults that escape being permanent cast offs in one or other form of government supervision.
In the long run, yes.
After all, the shitty consequences of the version of austerity we voted for in 2010 have only really become clear in the last few years. (And fixing things will lead to improves in 2035-40 or so.)
In that long run, we won't all be dead, but a recently decisive cohort of the electorate mostly will be.
The coalition inherited the return on investment of the Labour Govt in Surestart, so the disastrous results of the coalition austerity policies didn't become apparent for several years.
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
The Trump administration is deporting decent hard working people under the guise of going after the "worse of the worse" while letting criminal scum like "Tommy Robinson" into the country.
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
He was convicted of travelling to the US on someone else's passport FFS. There was a story in the paper about a British women in her 60s abducted and detained by ICE for 6 weeks while on holiday, valid visa, passport, no blemishes on her record, probably had to undertake not to return for a decade or more (not that she'd ever want to).
Trump administration welcomes Tommy Robinson to Washington
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
Does anyone think Labour will win the by-election tomorrow?
When the Gorton & Denton by-election was called I looked at the constituency and decided because it was only 57% white (2021 census) and has a fairly high number of students there so I dismissed it as a Reform gain. I had it down as a Labour hold with a reduced majority but when Andy Burnham was rejected as the candidate I still thought a Labour hold but more reduced majority. However the Workers Party decided not to field a candidate that I thought changes everything - adding their 10% to the Greens 13% of the 2024 Election gave them a good chance in my opinion. Anti Reform/Labour voters now had a party to vote for. So my betting strategy has been to bet for a Green victory - little but fairly often.
However the Labour Party has held the seat (and its predecessors) for many a year including the vast majority of its wards so they must be very experienced in knowing all the Labour supporters and getting them out to vote. I think this "professionalism" could be very important on the day and ensuring postal votes are returned - whether this beats the anger towards the current government is the moot point.
I therefore decided that Labour would come second, beating Reform into third and have a few small bets on this.
My prediction is therefore: 1 Green 34% 2. Labour 30% 3. Reform 26% 4. Conservatives 5% 5. Lib Dems 3% Others 2%
I do wish Reform would learn to tactical vote as they could cause chaos - betting with my heart here as a Green win would lead to another battle front for Labour.
Comments
Though yes I agree the top 20-40% percentile of the population should be looking more towards apprenticeships or starting their own businesses (though you can of course do degree apprenticeships too now)
They have no souls.
@ForecasterEnten
Mind blown about the early vote in Texas. TX Dems may outvote the GOP for the 1st time in a midterm primary since 2002!
This indicates they're well on their way to having higher primary turnout nationally & since 06 the party w/ higher primary turnout won the House every time.
https://x.com/ForecasterEnten/status/2026740763204149287
Had I not gone to uni I hope I would have got some technical job and worked my way up. But maybe I'd have got stuck in office/admin jobs like my dad. Uni definitely opened opportunities to me and each of my jobs depended on the previous qualification. But I paid no fees (2000 intake, but a poor enough family to be exempt) and I'm less sure of the cost-benefit analysis under current fees!
@Nigel_Farage
·
1h
Over 500 illegal migrants have crossed the English Channel so far today.
If you want to stop the boats, vote Reform tomorrow.
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/2026742660363391483
===
How is electing Goodwin going to stop the small boats?
Andy Burnham
Win because he was active throughout
Lose - Andy Burnham would have won the seat as the candidate
I am narrowly on a labour hold
I accept for doctors, dentists etc and engineers you absolutely do want degrees.
Remember Burnham in Brown's Government and remember who was wholly responsible for the Staffordshire Health Trust scandal.
Don't get me wrong, I am not a huge Burnham fan. He was a terrible Minister in the last government and there is little real evidence that he has learned much since. But Labour have looked around in despair for an alternative to Starmer and not found anyone in their near 400 ranks who looks better. Burnham will become the alternative around which the disgruntled and desperate can coalesce. And more than 200 of those MPs are going to be pretty desperate.
He is labour's prince over the water
The additional training for teachers feels like it's the wrong answer - I have had plenty of training, but don't have the capacity to implement it adequately.
I welcome the aspiration to intervene earlier.
More broadly, though, I think it still takes a deficit approach to kids with SEND - they're not as talented as other kids so we need to heap more onto them (and their teachers). We'd do much better to spend more effort trying to find their talents and nurture them, rather than beating them over the head with a maths textbook whilst reciting Shakespeare to them in an ever more strident tone.
You?
Edited as posted early by mistake.
90% of Excel functions should have a health warning and a suggestion that you should be using something else.
They might be in excel all day, every day - but it's just a list app for them. Maybe if you want to be fancy and show off you can sum a column.
Vaguely worries me for them once claude-in-excel gets a bit faster.
One that amuses me is the amount of people who know "don't use copy and paste on this file, it breaks it" but don't know how to use paste values.
The Labour Party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing, etc.
Kevin Schofield
@KevinASchofield
NEW: Labour embroiled in dirty tricks row on eve of Gorton and Denton by-election.
The party has put out a leaflet saying "Tactical Choice" say voters should back them to beat Reform.
Only, Tactical Choice don't appear to exist.
Story 👇
https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/2026742860809170951?s=20
You also have to have a degree to do a PGCE ie Post Graduate Certificate in Education.
Mine are OMFG.
Role of Scotland’s top law officer questioned after ‘bombshell’ over Peter Murrell charges
Lord advocate Dorothy Bain informed first minister of embezzlement charges against former SNP chief executive a year before they were made public
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/25/role-scotland-top-law-officer-dorothy-bain-questioned-peter-murrell-charges
To maxh, Vlookup fails as soon as anyone inserts a column or does anything. Index and match; or Xlookup, both avoid that.
I appreciate this is still imperfect, and the coders among us would prefer we send any data manipulation task to the dev team to work on for six months, rather than do them in five minutes.
I don't see much challenge to that from anything coming out of universities.
I also think we need to look at support staff. They are the one's desperately in need of more training. They are the one's who bear the brunt of the most dysregulated moments.
Highly trained, and adequately paid, SEND HLTA's are what is needed in abundance with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. So that they can't be pulled off their job to cover for Mr Johnson on GCSE English to go on a course.
And give them the authority to make decisions. Start having decisions made and meetings held with and by people who work with them on a daily basis. Treat them as professionals equal to QTS.
And adequate facilities. Sensory classrooms. Individual timetables.
All of this costs money though.
Keep the scumbag filth down where they belong. Keep social mobility in its box.
When I first started working back in 2000 I was told not only did I need act with utmost integrity at all times, the perception also needed to reflect that.
This is the sort of behaviour I'd expect from the Trump administration.
If a child can't read or count to an adequate standard they don't move up till they can.
If they still can't then we explore other options.
Rather than letting them drown in Secondary. And try to take everyone with them. Or just refuse school altogether.
Give your head a wobble.
When that party elides partisan interest and national interest (which nationalist parties tend to, as do Residents Association councils), more so.
When there's no external authority to tap you on the shoulder, even more so.
When the relevant news media are reduced to subediting press releases... oh, you get the idea.
The hard-right agitator said he was ‘making alliances and friendships’, including during a meeting at the State Department in Washington
The Trump administration has hosted Tommy Robinson, the British hard-right extremist, for a meeting at the State Department in Washington.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said he was in America “making alliances and friendships”.
The former football hooligan, who has convictions for assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court, was hosted by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser at the State Department.
“Honoured to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today,” Rittenhouse wrote on X. “The world and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend!”
https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/trump-administration-welcomes-tommy-robinson-to-washington-3bx3gk9g2
I remember doing a temp data-entry job back in the late 80s. A couple of us figured out that the IBM terminal keyboards had built-in macro recorders. So we were getting through about 10x the work of everyone else - even though we kept explaining 'this turns the job into a pure doss'.
Thankfully for Britain, those old fashioned terminals were replaced at great expense by Windows PC's which didn't offer the same facility (even the old 'recorder' app was blocked if we tried). So we 'levelled down' to average again.
Isn’t the set up at Westminster identical?
With, ironically, Angeliki Stogia as the only Greek candidate of the three. She hasn't had a particularly high profile, with the press being much more interested in Goodwin and Soencer.
After all, the shitty consequences of the version of austerity we voted for in 2010 have only really become clear in the last few years. (And fixing things will lead to improves in 2035-40 or so.)
In that long run, we won't all be dead, but a recently decisive cohort of the electorate mostly will be.
Some of the kids I work with or have worked with are phenomenally gifted.
I've had ones who valet cars, grow and sell veg and raise chickens and perform motor vehicle maintenance at the age of 13/14.
But they are statutorily obliged to be seated at a desk "accessing the curriculum".
Despite the fact that they can't read. And have long since given up any idea that they could learn.
Rather than having their special interests nurtured and appreciated.
Dismissing it so casually ignores the genuine cracks in the system, the frustrations it can cause which notably included the point that it can be hard to recruit people who deserve a shot despite no university education, because it is sometimes arbitrarily demanded.
How else does anyone get a visa today?
There was a story in the paper about a British women in her 60s abducted and detained by ICE for 6 weeks while on holiday, valid visa, passport, no blemishes on her record, probably had to undertake not to return for a decade or more (not that she'd ever want to).
I had it down as a Labour hold with a reduced majority but when Andy Burnham was rejected as the candidate I still thought a Labour hold but more reduced majority.
However the Workers Party decided not to field a candidate that I thought changes everything - adding their 10% to the Greens 13% of the 2024 Election gave them a good chance in my opinion.
Anti Reform/Labour voters now had a party to vote for.
So my betting strategy has been to bet for a Green victory - little but fairly often.
However the Labour Party has held the seat (and its predecessors) for many a year including the vast majority of its wards so they must be very experienced in knowing all the Labour supporters and getting them out to vote.
I think this "professionalism" could be very important on the day and ensuring postal votes are returned - whether this beats the anger towards the current government is the moot point.
I therefore decided that Labour would come second, beating Reform into third and have a few small bets on this.
My prediction is therefore:
1 Green 34%
2. Labour 30%
3. Reform 26%
4. Conservatives 5%
5. Lib Dems 3%
Others 2%
I do wish Reform would learn to tactical vote as they could cause chaos - betting with my heart here as a Green win would lead to another battle front for Labour.