It is unfortunate, but sometimes a good education does absolutely nothing to improve your chances of a job if the place where you live is undergoing an economic slump. I have a degree and suffered 5 redundancies in the space of year - none of these the result of anything I myself did, but purely down to the rise of unemployment in the area where I live. Another problem is that the government and various industry spokespeople do their damnedest to devalue your qualifications at every chance they get - telling everyone how much easier it is to get a certificate.

When the polytechnic system was dismantled it left a massive skills gap in the job market which some employers still have problems overcoming. The education system and the business sector seem to have long ago divorced and are barely on speaking terms so the schools and the universities are not turning out the kinds of prospective workers that are required. Degrees are too specialist or considered as less stringent than they once were, with a lot of stupid subjects impacting on the way the whole qualification is viewed.

All this being said, I would recommend that everyone try to stay the course with their education for as long as they can afford to do so. it is one more weapon in your arsenal - but it is no longer the workplace equivalent of a nuclear deterrent, more a semi-automatic machine gun that jams sometimes.

Learn more about this author, Paul Grimsley.
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