Emma Is Currently Working As A Care Assistant

[crash2006]

Emma Bonnar, 22, finished her degree at the University of Teesside in May and graduated with an honours degree in interior architecture and design. start with I rang round design firms looking for experience and got nowhere. Then I started applying online and putting my CV on the internet and registering with agencies - but I heard nothing. "

"Now I'm working through the night as a care assistant.

I've done all this and there's absolutely nothing - not even a tea lady in a design office

Emma Bonnar, graduate

"I don't like night shifts so I'm applying to bars and stuff - even supermarkets, but people were saying I was over-qualified - so I took my degree off my CV but still nothing, it's catch 22."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7822125.stm

[crash2006]

Emma Bonnar, 22, finished her degree at the University of Teesside in May and graduated with an honours degree in interior architecture and design. start with I rang round design firms looking for experience and got nowhere. Then I started applying online and putting my CV on the internet and registering with agencies - but I heard nothing. "

"Now I'm working through the night as a care assistant.

I've done all this and there's absolutely nothing - not even a tea lady in a design office

Emma Bonnar, graduate

"I don't like night shifts so I'm applying to bars and stuff - even supermarkets, but people were saying I was over-qualified - so I took my degree off my CV but still nothing, it's catch 22."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7822125.stm

Edited January 10, 2009 by crash2006

[1929crash]

And sadly, there are loads more like her, and there will be even more to come.

[DementedTuna]

Design is a tricky one at the moment. Massively over-subrscribed at university, and falling demand from the industry. Interior design especially... goodbye housing market, goodbye income.

Article doesn't say whether she got a First or not. These days, if you don't get one, your degree is pretty much ignored, too many people have degrees for a 2:1 or a third to have much clout.

A lot of the girls at my uni are hoping that their boyfriends will get a job when they leave so it won't matter too much if they don't get one. Others plan on going back to the parents for another few years.

Edited January 11, 2009 by DementedTuna

[tinker]

The educational pyramid scheme.

Tragic. Up to their eyeballs in debt. Disappointed. Frustrated. Shafted.

The con of cons. 50% going to university - a total delusion.

[Y-QUERK]

Tom Wooltorton, 22, graduated from University of Manchester in the summer with a 2:1 in Geology.

He said he did not realise how bad the job situation was and took some time off after he finished in the summer.

He said since he has been back it has been a nightmare trying to find work.

"Between September and Christmas I was just doing rounds looking for graduate roles but I only got one interview from the whole of that.

I remember I had to start searching for a job at the start of my final year if I was to stand a chance of getting one soon after I finished my degre. If I waited till I finished before going to interviews etc I would have definately spent 1 year at home waiting for the opportunity. This was back in 2004.

[Mega]

She could aways look @ Escort work

Mike

[bottletop]

She could aways look @ Escort work

Mike

have you seen her photo? minging

[crash2006]

wonder how long that sudent debt going to be with them.

[miko]

How times have changed for the university graduates. In the early eighties a friend of mine worked for a high street bank . She had been there a good few years going from grade 1 to grade 2 quite quickly. But the time to get to grade 3 was years , she worked in many different departments learning each job inside out .

What annoyed her more than anything else , was a graduate maybe in something like R.E. would walk in the door work in a few departments six weeks here six weeks there , move around the branch for a year or two and then be given a management role due to the fact they were a graduate .

Think those days are long gone.

[DementedTuna]

She could aways look @ Escort work

Mike

Many a true word said in jest...

Sadly, there are quite a few students that take this option, due to the extra fees.

If combined parental income is over £18k, then the grants stop, as it is assumed that the parents will give their child around £3-4k a year while they're at uni. However in practice you wouldn be suprised at the amount of parents out there who don't give their kids a penny.. probably because they're mortgaged up to the gills, or have other kids to pay for, or are generally just tight-fisted gits who think education is a waste of time (I hear this opinion quite often from old people).

And, that's where the real problems kick in.. where students pay for their rent with the gigantic overdrafts (up to £2k/year) that banks offer, or with a part-time job (soon to be non-existant), or by sucking hairy old bloke's todgers.

I was lucky enough to have poor parents and got the full hunk of free cash per year. Pretty sweet deal in fact, cheers Labour, no hairy todgers for me!

Edited January 11, 2009 by DementedTuna

[Privateer]

Article doesn't say whether she got a First or not. These days, if you don't get one, your degree is pretty much ignored, too many people have them.

I remember when I went for an interview at RAF Cranwell (flying scholarship) one of the old Group Captain-chappies noted that I had a 2:1. I admitted that it could have been a first if I'd put more effort in and he said 'Oh, dear me, no. Don't want people with firsts. They're all odd.'

Amused me no end, but aviation isn't interior design, is it?

[crash2006]

I remember when I went for an interview at RAF Cranwell (flying scholarship) one of the old Group Captain-chappies noted that I had a 2:1. I admitted that it could have been a first if I'd put more effort in and he said 'Oh, dear me, no. Don't want people with firsts. They're all odd.'

Amused me no end, but aviation isn't interior design, is it?

for fighter planes.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

I used to be a lecturer at the University of Teesside. One of the things that made me decide that it was time to go was meeting a personnel person from one of the few milk round calibre employers in the region at some function or other. She told me anecdotes about people they'd taken on who'd got a 2:1 or even a first, but still couldn't read, write or add up to the level of competence required for they regarded as a good graduate trainee. The result, she said, was that, with all due respect, if she saw 'University of Teesside' on an application form, that would be enough to consign it to the small round filing cabinet on the floor.

This is an utterly predictable tragedy, and one I predicted (discreetly, to start with) from when I joined the place in September 2000 to leaving in November 2005 (a typical story in my case: any first permanent HE post after completing PhD is better than none). We were systematically blocked by the senior management from honestly assessing the sorts of skills that graduate employers are looking for. This was because they knew full well that if you took in students with two Es at 'A' level, no force on the planet could provide the necessary 'value added' tuition needed to make them competitive with red brick graduates three years later. So they dumbed down the assessments, appointed tame externals and aggressively ticked the relevant political correctness boxes, and that was that. They even made us do a 'Teaching and Learning' certificate course, during which the 'all must have prizes' mantra was drummed into us as relentlessly as if it had emanated from one of Orwell's telescreens.

The real tragedy is that the brightest and most conscientious of the students I taught there really did have what it takes to compete with a redbrick or a Russell graduate in the graduate workplace; and that many will end up being unjustly tarred with the brush of their lower attaining peers.

I remember when I went for an interview at RAF Cranwell (flying scholarship) one of the old Group Captain-chappies noted that I had a 2:1. I admitted that it could have been a first if I'd put more effort in and he said 'Oh, dear me, no. Don't want people with firsts. They're all odd.'

I think there was definitely something in that a generation or two ago (in terms of a general rule). I was the only member of my programme cohort to land a first when I graduated in 1995 (in a cohort of about 40), and there hadn't been any for the previous two years. Where I teach now (history department in a Russell Group university in the north of England), it's about 10% per cohort as a general rule, and can go significantly higher. When I graduated, a 2:2 (a 'Desmond') was considered the norm. Below that, and there were either tragic personal circumstances or you were a bit of a pranny. A 2:1 indicated that you were either bright or conscientious. A first indicated that you were either both, or had no life (hence the reason I'm writing on this website in the middle of the night).

Edited January 11, 2009 by The Ayatollah Bugheri

[threetimesdead]

I used to be a lecturer at the University of Teesside. One of the things that made me decide that it was time to go was meeting a personnel person from one of the few milk round calibre employers in the region at some function or other. She told me anecdotes about people they'd taken on who'd got a 2:1 or even a first, but still couldn't read, write or add up to the level of competence required for they regarded as a good graduate trainee. The result, she said, was that, with all due respect, if she saw 'University of Teesside' on an application form, that would be enough to consign it to the small round filing cabinet on the floor.

This is an utterly predictable tragedy, and one I predicted (discreetly, to start with) from when I joined the place in September 2000 to leaving in November 2005 (a typical story in my case: any first permanent HE post after completing PhD is better than none). We were systematically blocked by the senior management from honestly assessing the sorts of skills that graduate employers are looking for. This was because they knew full well that if you took in students with two Es at 'A' level, no force on the planet could provide the necessary 'value added' tuition needed to make them competitive with red brick graduates three years later. So they dumbed down the assessments, appointed tame externals and aggressively ticked the relevant political correctness boxes, and that was that. They even made us do a 'Teaching and Learning' certificate course, during which the 'all must have prizes' mantra was drummed into us as relentlessly as if it had emanated from one of Orwell's telescreens.

The real tragedy is that the brightest and most conscientious of the students I taught there really did have what it takes to compete with a redbrick or a Russell graduate in the graduate workplace; and that many will end up being unjustly tarred with the brush of their lower attaining peers.

If they so "bright and most conscientious" why would they end up at a former poly in the first place?

Selection starts from the age of 2. It does not end with getting a degree.

It ends with getting a place at the university of choice

BTW, 95% of the top of the establishment in UK went through private education route. Not anywere near Teeside I suppose.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

If they so "bright and most conscientious" why would they end up at a former poly in the first place?

Either because they were mature students, or were the first generation of their family to contemplate going through HE and didn't like the idea of incurring the debts involved in living away from home as well as their tuition fees.

Around 90% of Teesside's FT UGs have home addresses within a 30-mile radius of the campus. They don't come from the same socio-economic background as the kind of students I teach now, who arrive on the Sunday before the start of the semester in a convoy of Volvos and Mercs up the M1 from the Surrey stockbroker belt and make their choice of HEI according to a trade off between their career aspirations and the degree programmes their predicted 'A' level grades can buy them.

You're right: I seriously doubt if even one of the UGs I taught at Teesside had gone to a private school. What makes me so angry about my experience there is that if we'd been allowed to teach and assess them honestly (including failing and kicking out the ones that weren't intellectually up to it at the end of the first year), some of them would have come out at the end of year 3 on a level playing field with those who had been educated through the private school-redbrick route.

Edited January 11, 2009 by The Ayatollah Bugheri

[Dave Spart]

have you seen her photo? minging

And I thought Mega's post was in bad taste.

[threetimesdead]

Either because they were mature students, or were the first generation of their family to contemplate going through HE and 1.didn't like the idea of incurring the debts involved in living away from home as well as their tuition fees.Around 90% of Teesside's FT UGs have home addresses within a 30-mile radius of the campus. They don't come from the same socio-economic background as the kind of students I teach now, who arrive on the Sunday before the start of the semester in a convoy of Volvos and Mercs up the M1 from the Surrey stockbroker belt and make their choice of HEI according to a trade off between their career aspirations and the degree programmes their predicted 'A' level grades can buy them.

You're right: I seriously doubt if even one of the UGs I taught at Teesside had gone to a private school. What makes me so angry about my experience there is that if we'd been allowed to teach and assess them honestly 2.(including failing and kicking out the ones that weren't intellectually up to it at the end of the first year), some of them would have come out at the end of year 3 on a level playing field with those who had been educated through the private school-redbrick route.

1. That wouldn't be our "Emma" - the interior designer (upper middle class profession, better called lady at leasure and a socialite) then. Poor and bright students go for save bets - medicine, law, accountancy, business. At least this can be surely said of Asians and Chinese.

2. Agree, the quality of degrees would not have been diluted. The solution now is - shut down some of the departments if not entire new universities, overhaul the degree classification system altogether. The best employers, however, never went and never will go further than milking rounds at Oxbridge.

Edited January 11, 2009 by threetimesdead

[Guest anorthosite]

What the hell does a "interior architect and designer" do that a painter & decorator doesn't?

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

The best employers, however, never went and never will go further than milking rounds at Oxbridge.

Partly because the other sectors haven't protected their brands by keeping their standards up. The QAA might continue to blindly assert that a 2:1 is a 2:1 is a 2:1 wherever it comes from. But as someone who has a redbrick undergrad degree, MA and PhD and has taught and researched in both a polyversity and a Russell Group institution, I know for a fact that this simply isn't true. Employers know it, too, hence the reason that (allowing for specific anomalies, e.g. an individual, niche-area department or school within a post-92 that has a world-class reputation among employers in one, very specific area) to all intents and purposes, a 2:1 from Teesside is regarded in the real world as being a totally different qualification to a 2:1 from Oxbridge.

[Privateer]

What the hell does a "interior architect and designer" do that a painter & decorator doesn't?

Charge £100 an hour?

[Ponzi]

Come on Terry Hall and Jerry Dammers...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu8OZV25Ego

[fildi101]

What the hell does a "interior architect and designer" do that a painter & decorator doesn't?

Waste three years and thousands of pounds learning what a truly keen aspiring interior designer would have learned from books, magazines, and their own experience by the time they were 16?

http://www.tees.ac.uk/Undergraduate_course..._and_Design.cfm

It's sad, because at the time she started the course three years ago, it might well have looked a like reasonable choice (for a naive 18 year old anyway), but looking at the syllabus, and the student work, it's not impressive. A couple of A levels in art/design and business studies, plus a good book or two, would have covered all the same ground, and for free!

A friend once gave me some truly insightful advice when I was between careers and looking for new direction - "If you really want do something, you'd be doing it by now".

I suspect if Emma had left school at 18 and got a job making tea and running around for an interior design firm BEFORE going to uni, she'd have been in a much better position to either study something more useful, or at least have a good amount of experience... enough to get a job or start her own business.

I've often thought they should raise the minimum age for degrees to 21. It would give young people a chance to learn a little about life first, and make better choices. It would cut out the wasters who are just there to delay getting a job, and it would mean those who choose not to go to uni would have a fair chance at the jobs that used to go to school leavers, but currently only go to "graduates" because there's so many of them to choose from.

Edited January 11, 2009 by fildi101

[DrBob]

Emma Bonnar, 22, finished her degree at the University of Teesside in May and graduated with an honours degree in interior architecture and design. start with I rang round design firms looking for experience and got nowhere. Then I started applying online and putting my CV on the internet and registering with agencies - but I heard nothing. "

"Now I'm working through the night as a care assistant."

So a girl with a design degree from a second-class university can't get a job in design. Where's the news? This sort of thing happens normally, never mind during recessions!

In 1991/2, during the last recession, I had a regular holiday job as a hospital porter, which paid less than even care assistant jobs at the time. One of the permanent porters had a physics masters, and couldn't find other work. He was a nice guy - not an unemployable nerd type. He worked full-time as a porter for at least a year.

Edited January 11, 2009 by DrBob

[The Spaniard]

When I graduated, a 2:2 (a 'Desmond') was considered the norm. Below that, and there were either tragic personal circumstances or you were a bit of a pranny.

Sir, are you including here the Oxbridge "gentleman's third" such as that awarded to the 14th Earl of Home?

A little more respect for tradition, if you please.