May

5

it doesn’t matter what you study at Uni

Filed Under education and career | 12 Comments

Honestly, it doesn’t matter which subject you study at University. The degree subjects with the highest average earnings are medicine, dentistry, law and engineering. That’s because there’s a clearly defined, well paid job at the end of each of those courses. If you want to be a doctor, dentist, or engineer, then I’d strongly suggest you take the relevant subject at Uni.

Interestingly, the same is not true of law. If you want to be a lawyer - whether a well-paid city lawyer, or working for the CPS - you can either take a law degree as your first subject, or you can take some other subject and do a post-graduate law conversion course. If you want the well-paid solicitor’s job, then it doesn’t really matter which you do, as long as you get an excellent degree from a good university and, of course do well in the relevant interviews.

the reality of post-university jobs

Most careers don’t have a specific first degree attached to them. Most don’t have necessary post-graduate training either. Some of those careers are well-paid, and some are less so. But with any given degree subject you can earn a lot of money if you want to.

I’ve got a maths degree, there isn’t an obvious job that leads from that - most people seem to assume that maths graduates become teachers. Not really the case, teaching was an unusual maths related career to go into after my course, most people have ended up working in finance, others in transport, toy manufacturing, supermarket retailing, and cold fusion research. Some or all of those careers may require additional on the job, paid learning, but all accepted graduates with little more than good grades.

Now, you might say that maths is a *hard* subject, or that anything numerical is going to be ok, but things like media studies are joke subjects. I don’t think that’s really fair. It’s true that if you do a science  / technology / numerate degree it opens plenty of doors for you, but these are only good doors if you like numerate stuff. If you don’t like that kind of science-y stuff, then why on earth would you want a job doing something related?

There are also plenty of careers that prefer arts or social science graduates. Publishing, tv and media, libraries, marketing, journalism and advertising. Some of these careers pay more than others, but you get to pick what you want to try and do, so you can take that into account if you like.

Finally, there are lots of jobs that are looking for graduates with no preference for degree subject. Surprisingly, in the UK banking and accountancy fall into this category. It’s not uncommon for historians and classicists to become accountants. Indeed plenty of engineers move into accountancy because it turns out the engineering, despite having good starting salaries, isn’t that lucrative after all.

what does this mean?

It means that the implications that your choice of degree subject has on your finances can be limited if you want them to be. Yes, many jobs with high earning potential are closed to, say, sociology graduates, but if you wanted to do sociology you probably wouldn’t have enjoyed them anyway, and there are plenty of other careers that you could pursue.

If earning a lot of money is important to you, it doesn’t matter what subject you studied at university, you can earn a lot of money, if you try hard and smart enough. You can certainly find a job you enjoy regardless of your degree. You may not be able to combine money, and enjoyment, but that’s true of everybody.

It doesn’t matter what you study at Uni, you can make anything work.

Image by tompagenet

Apr

30

starting things as an adult

Filed Under education and career | 6 Comments

I mentioned recently that I’ve taken up the oboe. It’s quite good fun, but of course, I sound terrible at the moment. That’s a bit of a problem because my lessons take place at the local music college, where the students range from 16 to 25 are planning on making music their career. And I’m in a practice room learning to play Three Blind Mice (actually, that’s too advanced for me at the minute). Quite embarrassing.

It got me thinking about how much harder it is to learn things as an adult. Not because it’s intrinsically difficult, but because there’s a sort of “I should really already know how to do this” kind of feeling. It’s certainly true of adult learner musicians - most people learn to play when they are kids, or at the very least, teenagers. If you see an adult with an instrument, there’s an assumption that they can play quite well already.

I bet it’s also difficult to go back to college as an adult. If there are lots of non-traditional students, it’s not too bad but otherwise I bet the same kind of feeling exists, at least at the start.

Of course, we can’t all have done everything at the same age as everyone else. And there isn’t room, time, or money to do all the things you’d ever want to do as a kid. It wouldn’t leave much room for growing as an adult. There are benefits to picking things up late. You have a better appreciation for the work that you need to put in. You’re more likely to take things seriously, work hard at them and succeed. Doing things the long way round can lead to making a better job of it in the end.

This relates to finance as well. Maybe it would have been better to realise the importance of personal finance earlier. Maybe it would be helpful to have started investing for retirement 5, 10 or 20 years ago. Maybe it would be better if you weren’t in debt. Still, you’re here now, and that’s the most important thing.

Just as it’s never to late to learn Russian, take up the trombone, or get your bachelors degree, you can sort out your finances, and end up in more secure and stable position. Leaving you time for all the other things that you didn’t get to do as a kid. One of these days, I reckon I’m going to get round to learning how to unicycle.

Image by MikeBaird

Apr

21

best financial move in college - meme

Filed Under Uncategorized, education and career | 22 Comments

I’ve seen a lot of people writing about the silly things that they did in college, like take out approximately a gazillion pounds worth of student loans, or take out a credit card so they could get a (sadly, uncool)
free t-shirt.

I don’t think students are always that dumb. In particular, I don’t think you were that dumb when you were a student, so I want to know what your best financial move was in college. What did you do then, that has stood you in good stead in the rest of your adult life.

It doesn’t have to be a financial thing in itself, as long as it’s something that has helped you develop and maintain a great financial position now.

I’m tagging Mrs. Micah, Cash Money Life, Rocket Finance and Remodeling this Life to answer me in their blogs, and to tag more people.

If you don’t have a blog, then please leave your best move in the comments - I want to hear them all.

Image by Matthias Rosenkranz

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