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Degrees and careers
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Work & Study
Do you NEED a degree to get a decent job? I am doing a HND at college, can I get a decent job with just that?
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I went to college, got three rather poor A-levels, spent a year waitressing then got my job as a clerical assistant for an insurance broker. I'm now taking my industry exams and learning on the job, getting paid a decent salary for it, and once qualified am pretty much guaranteed a highly paid job, due to there being a severe lack of young account handlers in our area. There are only three major insurance brokers locally and they'll be crying out for account handlers in a few years once the "old school" lot retire... So I'm pretty much sorted, as long as I put the effort in!
As the example above shows you, you can get a lower paid job then work upwards, getting a degree CAN help you skip upwards easier.
Could you not spend one more year at uni and get a degree, I went from year 2 of an HND to year 3 Ba.
A good HND and some decent work experience/ skills on your CV can get you a decent job too. Showing you have put your qualifications/ career intersts in to practice on your own time is always going to help.
The more qualifications you have the easier it can be to get a job at a higher level rather than working your way up, but they can work as a disadvantage to.
Susie
from the jobs i've been reading through, i'd say that more are looking for solid experience, but there are still a fair few that say 'must be educated to degree level'.
with a HND there'd still be a lot you'd be able to do, but you'd probably have a slightly lower entry level. doesn't stop you working your way up though.
having said that, like bongbudda said, if it's only an extra year to get a degree, it might be worth doing.
On the contrary, degrees are only essential for a minority of careers, like law or medicine. There are plenty of other trades that only require HNDs or less.