The price of our education

[Paul.M]

With all the coverage on the news today about the increase in tuition fees for future students from £3290 to £9000 got me thinking, how much has it cost each one of us just so we can work in an industry that we love. Most of us have put up the money ourselves, used redundancy money, life savings, taken unpaid time of work etc etc. All in all, how much have you spent on your qualifications, tools, books, schemes, insurance, upgraded quals, upgraded books? If you were to start from scratch, would it cost more than £9k? Fast track course £5k, 2391 £650, part p compliant £475(nic), mft £800, tools £600 to the skys the limit, books £400ish, ppe £?, the list can go on and on. The amount I've spent could have got me a quite a nice 2nd hand sports car! What is the price of your education? and would you do it all over again now if you just left school in this day and age knowing what you know? Is anyone telling there teenage son or daughter to get into the industry? I would like to ear other peoples views on this.

 

[Phil]

well i did pay for the lot myself and it cost a fortune. if i were to add up what i had spent on tools it would probably pay some of the deficit off
i am currently at uni and paying all over again. i just wish i had done it when i was 18 and knuckled down. but hey i didn`t and here i am now doing it the hard way. i must admit i am putting more effort in than i would have done when i was younger. i have two daughters and i am trying to get them both into uni to give them a chance, i am also aware that a degree does not mean a job any longer so i am trying to steer them in the right direction of work so they have something at the end of it.
neither of them want to become a spark but the youngest one would make a brilliant one. as long as they are happy in what they do and don`t get exploited i will be happy

 

[DurhamSparky]

same again! i buggered up college as i wanted to work! started working in facory hated it so joined navy! learnt a few tricks and trades and paid for all my sparky tickets as navy would not!

if i had my way again i would have stuck with trying to join the police....!

 

[Marvo]

Education isn't cheap but it's one of the best investments you'll ever make. I can't remember what uni cost, I was lucky enough to have parents who could pay it but I worked nights and weekends to put food and beer in the fridge for five years.

I'm guessing a degree would cost about 50 thousand pounds if they up the prices. Paid back at ten grand a year for six or seven years if you take a loan, still sounds like a bargain.

 

[Phil]

i was reading an article the other day about manchester uni charging the dentistry MA foreign students £150 000 a year. and yes that is 150k a year now thats enough to make the eyes water. no wonder they charge so much for a little filling

 

[Marvo]

Foreign nationals have always paid full price for UK universities. I think many UK students are unaware just how much their courses are subsidized by the government and I suspect the foreign nationals are basically keeping the UK uni's solvent. They regularly have large student recruitment drives in many foreign countries including South Africa.

 

[Paul.M]

Marvo, I like where your coming from with the investment bit, but the problem is that people can't afford it these days. Admit it, if you were the loans manager at the bank and was asked for a loan if let's say £15k to purchase an education, tools, van etc you would not give it in these uncertain days. This is the problem with people like me having to save up to do the next course on my road to evolution of becoming the level if sparky that I know I can become. It sets me back years. I wanted to be doing my hnd by now but yet I'm saving to do the 2391 early next year. There is no easy or short cut to become a good electrician, its not a qualification you can buy but money really helps things get done faster. My biggest regret is that I didn't do this when I left school at 16. But as Durham has said it would of been wasted on such young ears.

 

[circles]

Well I was lucky enough to get all of my electronics training for absolutely nothing as in my college days it was all free. At least it didn't cost me anything.

Since then, and much later in life I did a photographic degree for which I was charged for. I have to say I was already a photographer before I did the degree and whilst it certainly made me research all forms of art and photography it didn't really make any difference to my business. What's more, they reckon that there are more photographers being churned out of universities than anything else.

What I find particularly sickening about all this is the blatant con that is being done to young students. The colleges are signing up new photography students for a degree course knowing full well that only a fraction of those students will ever get a job in photography once they have graduated. The colleges happily charge what will be a fortune for the privilege. The only worthwhile thing these youngsters will have learned is, that no matter how much you may be conned on the street, the government and the education authority or a mixture of the both will shaft you far more than anything a con merchant will come up with. Imagine a £50k degree which is absolutely worthless in terms of getting them a job. Once the realisation slowly dawns on them that they have been well and truly shafted. And still it goes on, there is a never ending supply of students.

I know it is the same for the electrician courses which have already been mentioned on another thread earlier today or yesterday. The world is full of people just waiting to relieve the unsuspecting and vulnerable of their cash. It is the sickening society we live in. Many of these con merchants sail very close to the legal boundaries and barely keep inside them but they can go on and on with their scandalous and nauseating practices. They are entirely morally corrupt but that is of no consequence in law.

In reality the older I'm getting the more disillusioned I am becoming and I'm getting to an age where I am beginning to think, You know another 10 or 15 years and I think I'll be glad to shuffle off this mortal coil.

 

[Marvo]

I think any degree has value but it doesn't guarantee a career path nowadays.

Education for educations sake has always been around in the UK. The education system was just a large rolling thing that never really had any definite direction and perpetual students were a product of the free education of the past.

 

[UNG]

What amazes me with the education system, degrees and relating it to a job are the number of people who have degrees in subjects totally unrelated to the job they do

I have a cousin who has a biochemistry degree and works as an insolvency accountant not quite sure how the qualification relates

With regard to cost I don't want to think let alone calculate the total spend of the 35 years spent in the trade and some associated areas as it is probably well into six figures

 

[accordfire]

I've paid, one way and another, for every last bit of education I've had since I left school at 15.

Most lately, a Bsc in business studies with accounting, as a foundation to a full MBA. I have to be honest, I am re-thinking the merits of the MBA, to the point that there are other qualifications I think I'd rather have for the money. From start to finish, an MBA is probably around £25-£30k worth of education.

In the old days, it was considered fair that you effectively paid your way through your apprenticeship too - those of us that did one. I remember buying one or two tools a week, some long before I ever needed them - and the ribbing that went on when you got something all the other lads thought was junk. I recall one lad getting told that his new screwdrivers wouldn't last as long as the shine on them!

The idea used to be, much as it is with professionals like doctors, and lawyers, that you put up with low pay, and such in order to get the skills, and once you did, you had an earning for life. Not something that can be said about today.

I am very pro education though - but I believe if the government wants to increase tuition fees, and the cost of education, it needs to ensure that the education being received is worth that money.

I do have to chuckle at all the wannabe doctors, legals, engineers, and so on grouching at a £9k fee. As others have said, many of us here have probably spent well into six figures on education, training, and proof of competence to "mess around with a few wires".

 

[Paul.M]

I've just had a look into my crystal ball and seen the not to distant future. Due to university fees increasing now, college fees will follow suit. School leavers that would have gone to uni may take the cheaper option and get into one of the many trades "that we are short of" in this country because we all earn "average of 40k+ pa" as per some adverts. Again we need something like a gassafe scheme so Joe blogs knows that he is getting a qualified electrician, it will chase out the cowboys and make sure that the money we have paid for our qualifications is worth our money.

 

[circles]

Again we need something like a gassafe scheme so Joe blogs knows that he is getting a qualified electrician, it will chase out the cowboys and make sure that the money we have paid for our qualifications is worth our money.

Totally out of the question.... If they did that then the government would not only have to support all those that have made claiming benefit a career, but all the cowboys too......What would the world come to. No cowboys to blame for everything that has gone wrong with all previous jobs anymore....

 

[UNG]

Totally out of the question.... If they did that then the government would not only have to support all those that have made claiming benefit a career, but all the cowboys too......What would the world come to. No cowboys to blame for everything that has gone wrong with all previous jobs anymore....

Cowboys will always exist as the cheapest bodge to solve a problem will never go away whatever system is in place

 

[accordfire]

I've just had a look into my crystal ball and seen the not to distant future. Due to university fees increasing now, college fees will follow suit. School leavers that would have gone to uni may take the cheaper option and get into one of the many trades "that we are short of" in this country because we all earn "average of 40k+ pa" as per some adverts. Again we need something like a gassafe scheme so Joe blogs knows that he is getting a qualified electrician, it will chase out the cowboys and make sure that the money we have paid for our qualifications is worth our money.

It is a can of worms to be sure, and perfect proof of why balances are so important.

As you say, a shift in the cost of one thing, leads to potential oversupply in another.

I always laugh at the "earn £40k plus tomorrow" ads - if only.

I always give the same advice to anyone looking to take up a trade, especially (though equally applicable) to those who've already had one career, or living, different from the one they're looking at: Be prepared for a long, hard slog. I've taken many a lad out for the day, only to have him decide it isn't for him.

That said, I've taken lads out who were made for it too.

Those adverts, pretty well all of them, remind me of the army recruitment ads of old - major on the benefits, ignore the negatives - like coming home covered in crap every day, like aching from top to bottom because you've spent a day chasing out hard walls by hand (we weren't all born in an age of electric drills with stop action!!!) - rawl plug tools - who remembers those?

Days, no, weeks, of callouses on your fingers from terminating hundred of pots and seals in one board after another.

And yes, days of coming in to find the chippy had gone through your work just to get his wall up, or the plumbers had burnt out the insulation in your conduit by running their copper too close to your runs.

My first week in the game - I was given a reel of 2.5 T&E, a box of clips, a hammer, and a brick wall. I was told to run the cable from one end to the other, in a straight line, with a rounded end at the end into a junction box.

Monday to Thursday, it got ripped off the wall and I was told to do it again, better. I got really hacked off by the Thursday because I thought the run I'd done was perfect - and I remember clearly having a right row with the foreman. He said to me, after I'd vented - that the run had been perfect since the Tuesday - the point was to learn to stick up for the quality of my own work, to appreciate the standards required, and that if I'd thought it was good enough earlier, I really didn't as I kept trying to get it better.

It was a lesson that's stuck with me since. And probably the difference between a "job" and craft.

I'll say this much - it was also a lesson I took with me into MICC work, which was a LOT more prevalent then than now. We never got let loose on real runs until we'd proven we could consistently run it properly on practice boards, every time - that was chalk lining, measuring, drilling (or plug tooling), plugging, dressing the cable (and the p clips), getting the radius of the bends dead right, and the clip ratio round the bends, that we left enough to terminate the MICC on each end, and that we could terminate a perfect MICC every time.

You just don't get education like that any more.

 

[john25]

Cowboys will always exist as the cheapest bodge to solve a problem will never go away whatever system is in place

True as not every Domestic customer will know about *Gas Safe* Type schemes.

 

[Paul.M]

True as not every Domestic customer will know about *Gas Safe* Type schemes.

Yes john that's true but do you remember when corgi was around. Everybody knew that the gas man/women had to be corgi. With our industry people just hear the words "qualified" or "part p" and that's it, they are in the house bodging it together and ending up on watchdog. If all the scheme providers got together and come up with something like "elec safe" registered with (eg) niceic (or whatever provider your with) people will see the one and main scheme name and not be confused with all the others. There was a post on here 2 weeks ago about a letting agency would not accept napit, only niceic? And that is a company, not Joe blogs. The industry needs to be less confusing and streamlined for the customer so the proper electricians can do a proper job and make a living. I'll stop ranting now before I go on and talk about "competent person" aaaarrrrhhhh.

 

[KWCFC]

The joys of apprenticeships. Im getting paid to do my qualifications!

Fair amount spent by me on books and tools, but nothing I cant afford.

 

[accordfire]

The joys of apprenticeships. Im getting paid to do my qualifications!

Fair amount spent by me on books and tools, but nothing I cant afford.

Heh - I just looked at your user name, and now I'm thinking "Boneless bucket" for dinner........

The joys of "electricans forums" lol!.

And yes, bring back proper apprenticeships!!!!!

 

[johnboy6083]

i wastrained in the army first, and while the training was quick, (30 weeks approx) the theory was spot on. The instructorsensured that we would fail unless we acheived min 70%, and if we didn;t then we would be back in the evenings and weekends. Thats discipline for you. The practical was good training, but limited, and in small bays with one brick/block wall, one wooden and one plasterboard, with half wooden ceiling, and half plasterboard. The instructors used to hang off our work and pull it down, to ensure we got good fixings, and we were taught how to improvise bends in trunking/tray. wewerer also taught MICC, and galveconduit. also taught about large 11kv/LV transformers ect, which i beleive not many people get to see.

The only problem was lack of on site work, as in never! we were trained in the royal school of military engineering and that was it.

We had toppaass exams every few weeks, and the at the end you would get your 236 part 1 and 2.
I borke my leg jsut before my final 2 weeks, so missed my AM2, and generator training.I was discharged form the army with nothing, but they paid for my 2391 and 16th edition. passed both, but they were of no use because i wasn't qualified

I worked as a mate, and saw a lot of sparks doing rubbish work, until i decided to take a risk by leaving my £13ph job to start for a water feature company as a trainee on £7.50ph.

I rocked up being cocky, and was topld i was working with an old boy called clive. We were installing a splashpad sytem, (where water comes out of the groundd, and from arches ect for kids toplay in). He asked me what i could do, i repklied anything you want me too. neverteh less, he wouldnt let m,e touch anything, until he had shown me his way, and i had demonstrated it to him. I effectively served an apprenticeship under him, whilst taking my 2330 exams, and my NVQ3. The decision to take a massive pay dip was the best decision i have ever made, because i would be stuck now. I also owe clive, who is now a great friend an awful lot for taking the time to show me how to do a decent job (even though i must of wound him up by pestering him to let me wire this panel, and make off this big cable ect)

So the moral of the story is, there may not be as many apprenticeships as there used to be, but there are an awful lot of brilliant sparks out there who are willing and able to teach us young uns the great craft of being an electrician. there are just not enough, and too many sites are bothered with throwing it in, to meet deadlines.

 

[Doomed]

I have a earth science degree (geology/geography) - got it in the good old days when the state paid me to go to uni, and I could also claim housing benifit at the same time.
I have been lucky to have various employers who have also paid for my electronics and electricions qualifications.
I really have been lucky with my education.