Primrose Kitten

I know lots of you are concerned that, in today's economic climate, doing a non-vocational course is a waste of time, effort and money, but that's not actually true.

Vocational training provides strong suitability for a specific job, but it can be really hard to know whether you’re actually suitable until you start doing the job. And you can't start doing the job until you have a degree in it, and you can't apply for the degree until you've decided that you have a strong suitability for the job—which is a loop in the wrong direction!

I know some of you are potentially feeling stressed about what you're going to do in the future and you don't know what job you want, but don’t worry—this is completely normal! It is completely fine at your age to not know what you are going to be doing in five years’ time. It can be really hard to know what you love doing because you haven't tried everything yet. It can be really hard to say whether you have a vocation or not whether at this stage.

You may be concerned about spending time and money on a degree course that isn't linked specifically to a career, or a degree that might make it harder for you to get a job afterwards, but a degree is so much more than just something that's going to get you a job.

Any degree that you do, whether it's a vocational degree or non-vocational degree, will give you a large amount of skills that are very attractive to employers.

Take physics, for example. Physics is an academic course, not a vocational degree. If you want to go on and be a physicist in the future, then you have to do another degree, and a PhD afterwards. And then, hopefully, maybe, you can get a job as a physicist. You have to specialize even further. Physics as an undergraduate is an academic not a vocational course, but it is a very attractive course to employers because of the skills that it teaches you. For a physics degree you have to look at chaos (say, looking at a map of stars) and then be able to pick out meaningful patterns from all that jumbled data.

This is something that is attractive to lots of employers, no matter the industry. You have to be able to follow standard procedures, you have to be able to work in a large group and follow instructions. You have to be able to write analytical reports based upon evidence that you have collected. These types of skills are really attractive to places like the Home Office or MI6. Lots of lawyers come from a physics background because the same skills are involved: Writing reports based on evidence and seeing patterns within the chaos.

History and religious studies are more essay-based subjects that involve large amounts of evidence, large amounts of opinions, and making up your opinion and writing arguments based on that evidence. From many different bits of evidence (some contradictory, some missing), you have to delve deeply into your sources and do thorough research, and then you have to craft long essays where you present your argument in the most convincing fashion possible. These are great skills if you're thinking about going into journalism, or if you're thinking about going into politics or business consulting. Any degree will give you a wide number of transferrable skills.

It is very rare these days that you'll stay in one job the rest of your life. People often switch career paths, and sometimes a vocational degree can be rather limiting in the opportunities that it gives you. If you know that you want to go into business but you're not exactly sure what type of business, then you should consider undertaking a course with a major and a minor, or a liberal arts degree, as both will cover lots of topics.