but you still need to work to be successful.
I never said they didn’t work. What I said was they seem to chose different than earlier. It could very well be they work more than people used to, due to that difference in choice, but also that they may earn a bit less than they perhaps could, if they had chosen different. They may also on average be happier.
Silvaire wrote:
A good friend in Italy did the usual Italian thing of going to school on government scholarships until he was 35, he has 3 or 4 master degrees that were seemingly created around the professors whimsical interests.
I have never understood the ‘multiple degrees, staying at university until your 30s’ approach unless you actually intend to make a career out of academia. Assuming like me you have relatively low appetite for risk and don’t go into business yourself but intend to work in a corporate/professional environment of some sort, it seemed obvious that the thing to do was to take a 3-year bachelor’s degree in a rigorous scientific subject that had wide applications and then begin working at 21.
There is some of this at my new employer (I switched back at the start of the year) as we have a heavy Italian and Spanish presence. I don’t pretend to be some big high flyer – plenty have risen much faster – but having almost 20 years in the business I’ve reached a senior leadership position running a department. Within the company there are a number of Italian and Spanish folk who have this ‘many degrees / no work before 30’ profile and despite being not that much younger than me they are in entry-level jobs and had to compete hard to get them. I do wonder what the strategy is, or whether there even is one. I would not do a PhD or a Masters degree unless they were a requirement for the role I wanted – they are a considerable investment in time and money and I would expect something back for them.
On the other hand the head of another part of the business is Italian and about the same age as me (40). I don’t know his background in any detail, but I’m willing to bet he didn’t hang around at university into his 30s.
Years ago young people tended to enter " jobs for life", often following in the footsteps of fathers or other family members.
No matter the fact that I was lucky enough to have a good and successful career, outside the norm, my father always worried and on many occasions he tried to persuade me to get a proper job with a company.
Today’s young tend to more have the attitude of “live for today for tomorrow we may die”.
And who can blame them? Especially in the state in which the current crop of politicians and leaders have got the world. And in many countries a look ahead looks even bleaker.
I have never understood the ‘multiple degrees, staying at university until your 30s’ approach unless you actually intend to make a career out of academia.
The Economist tells it like it is.
There are still valid reasons to do higher degrees. e.g. in a very hard job market it might be better to be educated than unemployed (might explain some of your Southern European colleagues). People may value a student visa and the chance to get a foothold in a better administered country. And if you’re really interested in something then studying it and hanging out with lots of international students for a few years, might still be worthwhile.
Especially in the state in which the current crop of politicians and leaders have got the world. And in many countries a look ahead looks even bleaker.
I think, for Europe in last 200 years or so, the present is a brief return to normality 
Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time (from kwlf’s link)
It always was, unless you wanted to stay in academia or govt/EU-funded research. I have worked with good PhDs but they were good not because they were PhDs but because they had relevant job experience. But in the same company would be guys with zero post-school education who was just as productive.
A smart employer will try to get the best people, but the general trend is to not recruit people who are smarter than you are, and if you have a PhD you automatically remove yourself from the majority of the job market. It is probably no coincidence that the place where I saw the PhDs was run by an ex univ research fellow / lecturer (they like to be called “professors”, especially in the US) who started his business while still at univ A lot of PhDs end up in the City of London, in finance.
OTOH, being at univ is a good way to spend the 18-21 part of your life. Unless you have serious enterprise (say 1% of the population) you will end up stacking shelves in a supermarket, etc. I learnt virtually nothing at univ (Fourier, frequency/time domain ideas – about a week’s work) but enjoyed the life. Worked all the holidays and spent the grant cheques on motorbikes
However what I call “real expertise” is not ex univ. It applies to older people. They must still be there but they are well hidden, deep in companies. Although there is a serious decline in industries where most workers are self employed; that situation is now dire. My German friends tell me it is dire there too, which would surprise most people.
@kwlf that’s a great article and right on the money.
On the Southern European colleagues, I don’t know. They are in entry-level jobs in their 30s, but they also have colleagues in the same jobs in their early 20s. In their shoes, I’d be wondering what all the qualifications were for! There’s no premium that I can see for advanced degrees in my part of the business, it just means you start your career later. During my career some of my colleagues have at various times done MBAs, and it’s been suggested to me by a few people that I do the same. I’ve decided against it because I don’t see the payback on the investment – I’m not going to get a payrise simply because I have an MBA, nor will I get offered a better job or more rapid promotion because of it.
The part I worry about is the sustainability of the model. If folks are going to stay in education (at a net cost to the taxpayer) until their 30s, then will they ever earn enough and pay enough tax to pay their way?
Like most of my generation in the UK, I did a three-year bachelor course then started work at 21 – I’d intended to do a PhD but realised I could earn actual money instead. In my industry (computing) a PhD makes little difference, career wise – unlike say biotech, where it’s essential.
About 20 years ago I worked at a German IT startup. It was staffed entirely by “kids out of college” – except they were all in their late 20s. The German system, then anyway, meant you did 2 years military service (though nothing unpleasant), then spent 4-5 years doing a PhD while working on the side. It was normal to start work at 28 or so, and that without doing multiple PhDs which seems to be a very Italian thing.
If folks are going to stay in education (at a net cost to the taxpayer) until their 30s, then will they ever earn enough and pay enough tax to pay their way?
I don’t know how this runs across Europe but in the UK they have to pay their way nowadays, through univ. One would think this discourages frivolous subjects but apparently not… This is interesting reading; sounds like most loans are written off.
johnh wrote:
a PhD makes little difference, career wise – unlike say biotech, where it’s essential.
What part of biotech, actually working in a lab?
Many of our customers are biotech companies and so it’s closely related to what we do with a lot of personnel crossover. My experience is that the biotech business these days is more commercial than technical, and certainly in the commercial part of it I don’t think PhDs add anything.
Peter wrote:
One would think this discourages frivolous subjects but apparently not… This is interesting reading; sounds like most loans are written off.
They got the introduction of tuition fees in the UK seriously wrong. It was a perfect opportunity to distinguish between the useful and the indulgent – have no fees for ‘proper’ degrees and make those doing indulgent courses with no practical application pay their own way.
Instead greed predominated, as it always does, and they just put a simple cap in place imagining that there would be no collusion and that the market would dictate according to the value of different courses at different institutions. Problem was, every university instantly charged the maximum allowed for every single course and have continued to do so, increasing all fees each time the cap increases.
