The value of education

I don't watch an awful lot of TV, mainly because I wasn't really brought up with it. Being currently unemployed has meant that I now occasionally watch The Jeremy Kyle Show (there's a lovely picture of him with an explanation on an earlier post), but that's it during the day.

One programme that I always watch though is The Apprentice (UK version, on the BBC every Wednesday at 9pm between March and June). Perhaps my previous training as an accountant meant that a show about business appeals to me in some way, even if the "prize" at the end of it is to work for Sir Alan Sugar.

The candidates are often hailed as "Britain's brightest business brains". Some of them are so highly qualified it makes me embarrassed just to have a Batchelor of Science degree. Sir Alan isn't quite so intimidated. As everyone knows, he didn't even get near a degree: he left school at the age of 16 to sell car aerials out of a van. Many highly-educated candidates with a string of qualifications as long as one's arm have been bluntly cut down by Sir Alan's no-nonsense remarks. "These certificates and qualifications, all they tell any employer is that the person's got a brain," he once famously fumed. "It really doesn't matter whether someone comes to me with an MBA, an OBE, a KFC or a YMCA, as far as I'm concerned. You can't learn business practices out of a book."

Is he right? Just how important is education in the world of business - or even the world of work?

When you're at school, you're always taught that education is the key to success: if you don't work hard, you won't get good grades; and if you don't get good grades, you won't get a good degree; and if you don't get a good degree, you won't get a good job. It would seem that acquiring lots of good, solid educational qualifications is the only way to guarantee career success - or even business success. Sir Alan, it would seem, doesn't share that opinion: he once snapped at a Cambridge University-educated candidate on The Apprentice (after her disastrous attempt at running a pizza stall): "This is not some further education college, you know, where dummkopfs come to learn to make mistakes."

Clearly the lack of further education never held Sir Alan back from success. It didn't hold back a former schoolmate of mine who left school at 16: two years later he came to visit us all in the Sixth Form. There we were, at 18 years old, sweating over our A-Level revision and university application forms, and there he was - having worked his way up through his company over the previous two years - commanding a salary of £30,000 (the average starting salary for a university graduate now is about £23,000, but back in the year 2000 it was probably less than £20k).

One of the managers I worked under in my first accountancy job left school at 18, found her first job in a tiny accountancy firm on a tiny salary and persuaded them to train her for the chartered accountancy qualification. Once she qualified at the age of 21 she left them to join a bigger, world-famous firm. By the age of 25 she was already a manager on £50,000. By the age of 25 I was still struggling through my chartered accountancy qualification on a fraction of her salary. Not to mention £10,000 of student loan debt I'd incurred from getting my BSc Mathematics degree, which of course she didn't have. And I was nowhere near her seniority level.

The point I'm trying to make is, salaries aside, by the ages of 18 and 25, these people were far further along in their lives and their careers than I was at those ages. They got good enough GCSE and A-Level grades for their desired careers, then instead of going on to university (and they certainly could, if they wanted), tried to get their foot in the door of their chosen field by accepting a low-paid, low-skilled position and working their way up. Despite my top-class degree from a top-class university, at the age of 23 I still spent the first few months at the accountancy firm making tea and photocopying while I was "learning the ropes". I may have started on a higher salary than if I'd started at the age of 18, but I'd always be about 3 or 5 years behind in career progression.

Our former Prime Minister Tony Blair once pledged to have 50% of all young people in the UK in university education. Never mind that, frankly, some of these teenagers may not be suited to higher education, and as above, may not even need it. Entry to higher education certainly increased under his tenure, and so did the number of loans taken out by the Student Loan Company as a result. But, we were all promised, getting yourself into debt for a good university degree would all be worth it as you were guaranteed to get the best jobs as a result of spending an extra 3 to 5 years in a schooling environment. Try telling that to the class of 2009, who leave university in the middle of a recession only to find the "best" employers are not hiring any graduate recruits and the only jobs available are the low-skilled ones. Does one really need a degree to flip burgers in McDonalds?

There is also the issue that school and university life doesn't prepare you for the world of work. This has been a frequent complaint among a lot of graduates. At 21 I could tell you all about the Theory of Relativity and numbers on an imaginary plane, but I didn't have a clue about how to deal with office politics or the character transplant required to fit into work culture. I could tell you all about the Navier-Stokes equations for fluid dynamics, but I didn't have a clue why our office working methods were what they were.

I wasn't prepared for the fact that our office chat consisted of mindless gossip and conversations about TV programmes, instead of the debates about literature and world politics that I got used to with my university friends. I simply didn't have a clue that when your boss marches in, announcing that he's gone commando in the office because he's shit his pants and had to throw them away, you have to humour him instead of being horrified. Nothing could have prepared me for that!

So it would seem that academia doesn't prepare you either for real life or for the world of work. What worth does it have, then?

A couple of years ago I gave a talk at a local secondary school about what a career in accountancy would involve. As soon as their career advisor introduced me as an accountant I could see the whole room of 16-year-olds switch off like the lights had gone out. Only one seemed interested, and enthusiastically wrote down everything I said. There was one problem. He wanted to be an accountant, but he couldn't be bothered with his schoolwork. Particularly Maths. Now, while you don't have to be a Maths genius to be an accountant (in fact, it probably helps if you aren't!), you do need to be good at basic arithmetic. If you don't have a good GCSE and/or A-Level Maths grade by the age of 18, then forget it: no self-respecting firm is going to employ a trainee accountant who can't count.

It's not just accountancy: you'd be surprised how important basic mathematical skills are for day-to-day living. Particularly with financial matters: at best it stops you paying more than you necessarily need to; at worst it stops you being completely ripped off.

On The Apprentice a few weeks ago, Paula, a human resources manager, received the "You're Fired" treatment from Sir Alan and crashed out of the competition despite having come up with a brilliant body-care product and organising her team efficiently. The reason? A simple arithmetic error arising from mixing up two essential oils meaning she'd spent over £700 instead of the £5 she thought she'd spent. Paula's bleating that "I'm no good at numbers" was viewed dimly. It was basic maths that we all learned in school.

Other work and life skills build on school learning too: if you've never bothered to learn to spell or use grammar properly, you can't expect other people to understand what you've written. Business clients will think you are unprofessional and incompetent. When applying for a job, it could even annoy the person who is reviewing your application. Computer spell-checkers don't always pick up spelling or grammar mistakes, so it still means you have to learn these academic skills at some point.

Increasingly employers are demanding an ever-widening set of academic skills, such as foreign language skills and basic geographic knowledge. So ignoring your teachers may not be such a good idea after all.

Some professions actually need a relevant university degree: if you want to be a doctor you need to do a degree in medicine. My boyfriend works in IT but he has a Computer Science degree. Sir Alan's assertion that educational qualifications "only tell an employer that person's got a brain" is therefore not entirely true.

Personally, I don't regret the time I spent at university. I'd wanted to go since the age of 11, and being Little Miss Straight "A" Student without much effort meant that there was no way I wasn't going to go. If I had my time all over again, I'd still have gone to university, even if I might have picked a different subject. I loved my time at university. Not only did I get to be independent, I learned how to cook, how to live on a shoestring budget, how to interact with people from vastly different social backgrounds - and cultures - from me. I met great people and got to challenge my brain. I took advantage of all the opportunities I didn't get at school - student journalism, living with friends, martial arts classes and so on. I learned how other people lived, worked, and thought. I learned so many things that I never would have known if I never went to university.

I also learned that life is what you make it. The greatest education in life is that of life itself, but your academic education is of as much value as you make of it. And sometimes the uses you find for your education can be quite unexpected.
The writers of the musical Avenue Q have degrees in English Literature, commonly seen as a "useless" degree that doesn't lead to anything, career-wise... so they wrote a song in Avenue Q called "What Do You Do With a B.A. in English?" You can't argue that they didn't make use of that!

A much-needed afternoon tea break

As you can imagine, the reason I called myself "Afternoon Tea Break" to start with is because I started this blog during an afternoon tea break - well, one of many, being your typical tea-gulping Brit. After some of the news I've had this week I reckon I'll need a nice soothing cuppa or two!

Sometimes changing career can really feel like you're taking one step forward and two steps back. Or, in my case, one giant leap forward... and an equally giant leap back.

No sooner had my delight subsided over winning a two-week work experience placement in the office of a national daily broadsheet, I got dealt several setbacks on the job front this week. Not only did I get rejected for the accountancy jobs I'd applied for, I found out I won't qualify for the full entitlement of Job-seekers Allowance from the government, on the grounds that I have savings, no children and my own home. I had to laugh a little. Yeah, I've spent the last four years paying a fair amount of taxes and National Insurance (social security) out of my wages, so you'd have thought I'd qualify for the full entitlement on losing my job, but apparently not. Ah well.

I could sit here and moan about it some more, but it would serve no purpose so I won't. It did make me realise that my little career-changing plan may have to undergo some tweaking.

Some people are able to jump straight from one career to another, but I am not in that fortunate position. As you know, the original plan was to use the accountancy jobs to build up some savings to cope with a fall in income, especially as I was sure I would have to either re-train or take some courses to get into either of my chosen fields. However, with accountancy jobs very thin on the ground at the moment - most of the chartered accountants that have been made redundant are newly-qualified, like me - the career change may have to happen a lot sooner than I'd planned. I'd had a chat with a recruitment consultant this week who told me that some of the newly-qualified chartered accountants on his books had been looking for jobs for the past seven months, so my situation (i.e. having been out of work for two months) wasn't so unusual.

"Seven months?!?" I screeched, "but I can't be out of a job for seven months!!! How on earth do these people survive for that long???"

I didn't get a definite answer, but it really didn't matter. I realised I had to kick-start something, and soon. While I was glad that I had already embarked on my distance-learning A-Level courses - English Literature is hopefully helping my writing ability and Sociology is giving me a fascinating insight into that field - the original idea was to study them alongside a full-time job. Despite hating accountancy, it was still in the original plan to use them to fund my next move, but obviously if there are no jobs (as well as the fact that I want to quit anyway) then there's no point hanging on, is there? The courses are certainly enjoyable, but not bringing in an income, and career-change or not, we all need something to live on!

So it's back to the drawing board for me; I shall need to re-think the original plan. But not before I take another afternoon tea break.

Quitting your job???? Don't you know there's a recession on????

I swear, if I could have a pound every time I've heard a version of the above question I'd be a seriously rich girl by now. One of the first things you realise - when you first announce your intention to change career - is that not everyone agrees that it's a good idea. I reckon it's fair to say that once you've made that decision, you need a mind of steel to resist some of the doubt and incredulity that comes your way. As if making the decision to do it wasn't hard enough!

Obviously I'm not referring to my closest friends, boyfriend or family; they were relieved as it meant they didn't have to hear me moaning about my job anymore. Well, my mum isn't totally comfortable, bless her, as I explained in my previous post ("Back To The Beginning") but I'm sure she'd want the best for me.

No, the people I'm referring to here were my accountancy colleagues, or friends that had been colleagues, even the ones who'd proclaim (either in the office or at Friday drinks) that they didn't like their jobs either. Many of them thought I was mad. I remember when I handed in my notice last summer at the accountancy firm I worked at: I'm sure my boss just thought I had a bad case of PMT. It took some time for me to convince him I was absolutely serious. "But... but... but..." he spluttered, "don't you know there's a recession on? You won't find another job! Accountancy firms aren't hiring that much at the moment, you know, it's not like two years ago!"

By that stage, I wasn't quite so fussed. I'd been planning this for a good few months, since about Christmas 2007 in fact. Even if I didn't know what career I wanted to change to at that stage, knowing back then that I definitely wanted to change career was enough to galvanise me into taking my first action: sorting out my finances.

What? I hear you cry. You mean like budgets and savings? But that's boring! And you'd be right. It is. But necessary. Who was it who said "when the going gets tough, the tough have cash"? Making a career change isn't always smooth sailing. So, you have to be prepared. That means financially as well as emotionally - the last thing you want to be thinking when you're worried about whether your career change will work or not is "Shit - I'm flat broke!"

After doing some research, I was shocked to discover that I was being vastly underpaid; the market rate for someone of my skills and experience was about 10-15% more than what I was being paid. I asked my boss for a pay rise. He refused. I realised then that I had to leave.

The other factor in my decision to leave was that around this time I started to get sharp pains in my chest, like searing hot knives, on a permanent basis. I was only 26 and in good health. The doctor was convinced it was stress; while I was doubtful of his diagnosis for a while I did notice that as soon as I handed in my resignation notice, the pains magically disappeared. 'Twas a miracle, I tell thee!

Before I handed in my notice, I contacted a recruitment consultant to sound out the job market, and in particular, the market for temporary and contract jobs. In summer 2008, the job market was certainly a lot better than now, so I was able to get a temporary job in commerce rather than an accountancy firm. I figured that, while I had enough savings to last me a few months without work, it wasn't enough to give up accountancy completely. In fact, with a mortgage to pay, it may well take quite a while before I am able to give up accountancy completely. But I'm on the way to doing so, rest assured.

The temp job paid pretty well, which was good as it enabled me to to save more money into the "emergency cash fund". (Also known as "career change fund" or "my boss can shove this job up his arse fund" - take your pick). It was so hard trying not to spend the extra cash I was earning - why is it that the moment you go on a budget, suddenly you are surrounded with so much temptation? I think the only thing that kept me from splurging during this time was the knowledge that the less money I had saved for the career change, the longer I'd have to stay being an accountant!

While I still don't have the financial resources right now to quit accountancy completely, I've had time to read books on changing careers and think about what I want to do. I can't quite sit down and say "OK, I want to do X, and I definitely know that's what I want to do," so what I've decided to do is follow what I'm interested in and actually try it out. My temp contract finished last month, so I'm looking for another accountancy job to continue funding the career change, but in the meantime I have started that English Literature A-Level I wanted to do 10 years ago. I found a place that does distance-learning qualifications - it's called the National Extension College and for those of you in the UK, the website is http://www.nec.ac.uk/. I spent ages looking for a reputable distance-learning company as there's some real scams out there on the Internet, and I found this one on a UK government advice website.

In addition to that English Literature A-Level that I've finally got round to doing, I'm also doing an A-Level in Sociology (opted not to go for Psychology in the end), also by distance-learning with the National Extension College. I had to use some of my savings to pay for all of them, but hopefully it'll be worth it.... when I actually get started on the courses! The good thing about doing it this way is that I get to try out whether it does suit me or not; and if it doesn't, then I suppose I shall retreat back to my accountancy stepping-stone and think again.

So.... that's a potted history of how I started my career change, and where I am at the moment. Obviously it's very much a work in progress and there are topics I've touched on, like personal finance issues and first steps, that I want to go into more detail and share my tips and advice on. Probably the next time I take an afternoon tea break.

Back to the Beginning

Now that the blog appears to be up and running - and now that I've figured out how to work it - I suppose I should explain a little bit about me and how I came to be where I am now. The story starts ten years ago - when I was 17 years old....

....and choosing my A-Levels. For any readers from the US, I am not sure what the equivalent is (I think some countries do the International Baccalaureate which is supposed to be the equivalent), but in the United Kingdom, if you want to go to university, you spend the two years between the ages of 16 to 18 at school or a further education college studying for your A-Level exams. These determine which course you study at university - and indeed, which university you study at - which in turn determines the job you do. So when you're about 16 or 17, there's a lot of pressure on you to perform in the chosen three or four subjects that are supposedly going to map out your entire future from now to eternity.

I had a hard time choosing which subjects I wanted to do, truth be told. There wasn't anything that I particularly wanted to do with my life at that stage; although I liked the idea of studying for A-Levels and going to university (and experiencing student life of course). All I knew is that I loved writing, reading fiction and psychology books, but I was also good at sciences and maths. So in this confused state of mind, when my parents plotted that I study for an Economics degree and go into the world of finance - "because humanities subjects lead nowhere and finance pays so well!" - I didn't object, despite having no prior knowledge or interest in Economics. So it was determined that I do Economics (parents' choice), Maths (my choice, but one that would please the parents), Further Maths (ditto) and Physics (recommended by some idiot careers advisor because "it complements Further Maths and universities look highly on it").

In hindsight, I should not have listened to any of them: for starters, it turned out that university admissions tutors really didn't care whether I'd done Physics or not. I was hopeless at Economics, barely managing to scrape a pass in all the tests I was set even with my best efforts. I had no interest in the subject and simply couldn't get my head round any of it. I spent a year arguing with my parents, who felt I wasn't trying hard enough, and arguing with everyone else, which left me feeling miserable and useless. After a year, I managed to persuade the deputy headmaster that I wanted to give it up. I missed writing and reading and wanted to take English Literature instead. Unfortunately, after a year, it was too late to change A-Levels, so I had to just drop Economics without replacing it. To say my parents were disappointed was an understatement.

There aren't many degree subjects you can study with A-Levels of Physics, Maths and Further Maths; so I applied to study Maths at degree level. Within a few weeks of starting the course, I was in a panic: I didn't like the course, but what the hell can you change to when you have Physics and Double Maths as your A-Level subjects? Apart from Physics, which I found worse than Maths, so that was out. Some people had other A-Levels, such as art or geography, which they had good grades in and thus could change to; but for me, it was either finish the Maths degree or drop out of university. Horror stories abounded (at the time) of people who dropped out of university: with no degree, they were condemned to poorly-paid jobs with no hope of career progression or personal advancement. In addition my parents were only prepared to fund one three-year degree as they weren't exactly rich, which was fair enough. After being reassured that Maths was a useful degree which led to a wide array of jobs, I decided to grit my teeth, swallow my pain and finish it.

Which I did, and despite flirting heavily with student journalism and volunteer radio, in 2003, I graduated with a good, solid BSc Mathematics degree. But then what? The careers advisors who told me that "Maths was a useful degree which led to a wide array of jobs" were sought as I asked them what I could do. "You could teach?" one suggested. Er, no, don't fancy it. "You could become a statistician?" Sorry, I didn't like the statistics module. "You could go into finance?" I don't have any interest there, I'm afraid. "Ah, well, then you're stuffed. There's nothing else you can do, sorry." Another asked me, "what do you want to do, then?" Actually, I replied, I want to write for a living. "Ah, well, you've done the wrong degree. Nobody's going to want to take you on to write with a Maths degree. Sorry."

I decided to take a year out to travel, but having no money (and not having parents who were able to fund me) I decided the best way to pay for my travels would be to work as an English teacher, so after getting a TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification, I decided to spend most of 2004 in China, teaching English to adults and children and earning enough money to fund my travels. I loved it, and loved living in China, but didn't fancy the idea of teaching in the UK. So when my contract finished I returned to the UK but still had no idea what to do. My parents, though disappointed that I hadn't done an Economics degree, hadn't quite given up on the idea of me working in finance. Not wanting to disappoint them further, I applied to train as a chartered accountant, and with my Maths degree and grades, I had no problem being accepted for a training contract.

I make it sound a little bit as if my parents are to blame, but sitting here writing this, I don't think they entirely were. They had had to struggle all their lives; they hadn't been to university themselves and spent most of their adult lives working very hard for very little money, and clearly wanted the best for me. They simply didn't want me to struggle as they had done, and didn't want me to spend all my adult life worrying about money or living on a tight budget, as they had done. I can't blame them for that; and the fear of their children experiencing the same poverty and hopelessness they had once experienced must have been ever-present in their minds when urging me to do A-Levels and a degree which I may have hated, but would have - in their minds - secured my financial future for ever. I can't fault their intentions, but the guilt I felt at "failing" them or "letting them down" was the reason I chose the path I did, even if I didn't enjoy it or wasn't naturally good at it.

I wanted to quit accountancy so many times though; this was even worse than the Maths degree. I hated every minute of it and frequently cried myself to sleep. I hated the work, which was boring and repetitive, and hated most of my colleagues who were equally boring and repetitive - not to mention arrogant, spoiled, pretentious, chauvinistic and narrow-minded. Yuck. My mum hated seeing me unhappy; but at the same time didn't want me to give up. She didn't want me to miss out on the large salaries that many qualified accountants were supposedly receiving, and urged me not to quit the chartered accountancy training contract; these were just teething problems from a graduate unused to working life, she promised - you'll feel differently when you qualify in three years. I think she desperately wanted to believe that, but three years later I didn't feel any different; in fact I knew, more certainly at that point than any other, that I had been following the wrong path in my life for the last ten years.

And that, readers, is what kicked off the reassessment which led me to decide to change career. I'll pen off here, I think - you must be exhausted after reading this! I shall have to make future blogs shorter I reckon.