Skills Shortage Will This Story Ever End?

[pisuerga]

en España dentro de poco la situación será mucho peor que la vuestra. se paga a la gente que lleva mucho tiempo sin trabajo sin exigirle nada. la gente no quiere trabajar duro por 1200 euros, cuando por estar tumbados en casa les dan casi 500 y pueden hacer algún trabajo para amigos o conocidos sin registrarse y ganar algo más de dinero en poco tiempo .... la gente joven no quiere conducir camiones ni arreglar un tejado en verano con 38 grados.
Encontrar personas para trabajos con el tractor o cosechadora sin que te hagan averías de mucho dinero, es prácticamente imposible.

 

[Ffermer Bach]

I actually see the skills shortage as a good thing. There will finally be a rebalancing in the economy and labour force. Yes the problem should have been addressed 20 years ago and it will take 20 years to fix.

But it offers young people a very competitive alternative to the shrine of higher education (and I say that as a uni graduate). £50k debt and a job for £25k as a "manager", or a paid apprenticeship, zero debt and into a £50k job as a builder or wagon driver? I strongly suspect a lot of young people will be reassessing their options, and well they should.

I hope this skills shortage means we will reappraise where funding for training goes, and put more into Further Education and local colleges, try to increase higher apprenticeships too, and what has happened to local agricultural colleges? They all seem to concentrate on horses, conservation and small animals now, instead of farming.

 

[Sonoftheheir]

In 2025 there will be 50000 to many sport therapists.

And Marine biologists….

 

[Ffermer Bach]

And Marine biologists….

I know someone who was a marine biologist, she said there were some great jobs, I think she worked in the Caribbean, but the pay was terrible and once you have children and want to work back in the UK, difficult to find a job that uses the degree.

 

[kfpben]

I hope this skills shortage means we will reappraise where funding for training goes, and put more into Further Education and local colleges, try to increase higher apprenticeships too, and what has happened to local agricultural colleges? They all seem to concentrate on horses, conservation and small animals now, instead of farming.

I have a great lad working for me who has recently finished Ag at Sparsholt. I’ve had quite a few decent lambing students from there too.
All these colleges have the other courses but plenty of students are still doing ag (here at least).

 

[betweenthelines]

Local haulier who used to deliver my spuds had trouble getting drivers in the early 2000's.
Problem should have been sorted 20 years ago. And by sorting, I don't mean using cheap drivers from Poland....
Temporary fixes only fix things temporarily.

100% agree with this. The transport industry knew 15 years ago, that irrespective of Brexit, a big shortage of drivers was coming up. But the industry did nothing about it-no massive training programme, no big wage increases, nothing done to improve working conditions, so no one was interested in becoming a driver.

Now they're squealing and asking the Govt. to sort it out. Govt schemes to retrain the unemployed to drive HGV's have been around for as long as I can remember-but where dependent on a job offer and hauliers wouldn't commit.

I'm sure there's a similar tale in other industries that are short of staff-poor pay and conditions and a lack of training is coming home to roost.

 

[toquark]

I think my cousin did that... or maybe physiotherapy. He works for a football club. I think another farmers son around here did a P.E. degree, but he said it was just a bullsh*t degree because the job he eventually wanted to train for had a degree as a requirement, and it seemed like a degree that would be fun to do.

I think that's the point that was originally being made. Many degrees aren't training for a particular job, they are just because so many jobs make a degree one of their requirements for prospective candidates. Basically like our Prime Minister getting his degree in Classics from Oxford.

Another cousin went to Cambridge for a medical degree. She said it was a hard slog with a lot of lectures and work to do, and she always felt one of her housemates was taking the pee a little doing a degree with minimal actual study involved, just to get the Cambridge Degree on the CV.

I did a science degree, which required a 7-9 hours a day either in lectures, labs or field work. Unfortunately, I wasn't bright enough not to have to study for 2-3 hours a day on top of that to get through the exams. My flatmate did social anthropology (I lived with her for 3 years and I never really understood what is was and still don't), she spent 2 hours a week in tutorials. There was an expectation on her to spend a lot of time reading, but I never really saw the point in paying £9k/yr + living costs just to be told what to read. She ended up retraining into a vocational occupation because surprisingly enough, social anthropology didn't lead anywhere.

The model for a lot of the arts degrees is shot. The internet is quickly eroding their value and its just a matter of time before online verification is widespread, spelling the end of the money for old rope gravy train that is social science teaching.

 

[le bon paysan]

As my mum used to say, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
Today's Ponzi scheme will eventually fall and there's going to be a f**king big mess.

 

[Wombat]

blair should be asked this? he was the one that made it the labour parties misson that more than 50 percent of children will be able to go to uni, at the time back then in the 1990s their wasnt enough of the so called well paid jobs for the number of graduates leaving university? many studies showed that ? blair should be brought to answer that and the going to war with the phoney weapons of mass distruction statment in iraq in 2003?

Maybe he was too busy avoiding stamp dutys

 

[Bald Rick]

Bring back the day release technical colleges PDQ and bin off 60% of "universities".

127 applications for an HGV temp visa out of 5000 on offer speaks greater volumes than the Labour opposition does to this government

 

[Boysground]

The problem with uni education is the number of pointless degrees. My daughter left uni last year. One of her friends did a degree where every lecture was with another course. It was something to do with marketing, in reality it was just a way for the uni to fill lecture hall space to get more money coming in. Other friends have done degrees where there is no prospect of a sensible job linked to that degree.

Non of this is helped by students expecting to walk out of uni on 50k and not wanting to build a cv and gain experience.

None of this is relevant to my daughter she is well on her way to being a lawyer.

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[betweenthelines]

Bring back the day release technical colleges PDQ and bin off 60% of "universities".

127 applications for an HGV temp visa out of 5000 on offer speaks greater volumes than the Labour opposition does to this government

Why is it the Government's fault? Drivers have seen what's on offer and don't want to play. If British HGV drivers don't want the jobs, why should overseas drivers?

Anyway, I thought farmers were against government interference in the free market?

 

[Still Farming]

Guy in the village is a one man builder,very competent.

Charges £200 per day And has more work than he can cope with.

Probably could charge £300 per day And still have plenty of work.

If you want something done ask a busy person?

 

[Bald Rick]

Why is it the Government's fault? Drivers have seen what's on offer and don't want to play. IKf British HGV drivers don't want the jobs, why should overseas drivers?

Anyway, I thought farmers were against government interference in the free market?

If the government had had anything about them, they would have known a long time ago that the stress on deliveries was coming and perhaps have done something sooner about it e.g. mobilising the army drivers earlier

But, yeah, why would a foreign driver want to come here to pee in to a bottle and park up in a layby for a pittance.

Plenty of issues that Labour could use to beat Boris over the head with

 

[SteveHants]

I think Blairs idea was good, the polytechnics were in the main poorly funded, some were doing a good job , but even then the qualifications they handed out , were treated with respect by few employers.
He was trying to create the German model here, where , asI understand it most kids get a degree in something whether it is mathematics or tyre fitting. However these new “Uni’s” took on all manner of air and graces with Southside Poly teaming up with Northborough tech college become Westhampton university. Quickly dropping the bricklaying, basic car maintenance, haidressing etc in favour of sports therapy, media studies, and various other quack courses.
Then they borrow large sums on recruiting drives and even open offices in countries like China, Vietnam, India, knowing rich students from these countries will pay a small fortune for a degree from an English Uni, with a nudge nudge wink wink that for a suitable donation to funds a first will be a certainty.
Then a certain new government despite support from a party who guaranteed if they got to power to remove the then £3,000 a year allowed all Uni’s to charge up to £9,000 a year in the belief only the very best ie, Oxbridge Imperial Manchester etc. would charge that for a proper degree. Instead they all piled in and those in control,awarded themselves some very high renumeration for the hard work they had put in

The problem is that most Universities are private bodies - there is no state control unlike in many other countries.
The metric by which they are measured leans heavily on the NSS (National Student Survey), which takes place approaching graduation.

This leads to the situation whereby universities offer courses based on how popular they think they will be as more enrolment = more revenue and this is what businesses do. They also like to rebrand/slightly change courses that are dropping off in popularity to attract future students. If they thought construction degrees would sell, they'd sell them.
Agriculture is pretty important, as far as I'm concerned (well it would be, wouldn't it? ) in terms of being in the national interest to have Ag science recruiting the best and to have innovative practitioners within the industry, and yet the number of places that offer it continues to dwindle, and campuses sell off farms etc.
The problem with the NSS, in my opinion is that it takes place too soon after the students finish - in my opinion it would be much better to ask them a couple of years after they finish so that they can assess how well it has served them in terms of their career ambitions etc. We get a lot of focus on things that is clearly fresh in the students "list of concerns" (eg the food in the canteen not being as they would like it) without any perspective gained from time spent since leaving (whereupon, I suspect that the importance of the canteen rapidly diminishes etc).

 

[SteveHants]

I know someone who was a marine biologist, she said there were some great jobs, I think she worked in the Caribbean, but the pay was terrible and once you have children and want to work back in the UK, difficult to find a job that uses the degree.

That was my BSc - Marine and Freshwater Biology. I went into Aquaculture, which is still a growth industry.

 

[Boysground]

That was my BSc - Marine and Freshwater Biology. I went into Aquaculture, which is still a growth industry.

A friend of mine did marine biology. He’s just retired from the army as a colonel having had a very interesting career avoiding the usual military route. He is now working for the UN in Africa

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[Mark Hatton]

The Skills Shortage is very much a real issue across many sectors of the economy, especially in industries that require physical work. Trades type skills based careers haven't been pushed over the last 30 years, they haven't been seen as attractive sectors to get into. We now have generations that don't want hard work, It amazes me the amount of people who can't do the basics of DIY tasks, the local facebook groups are constantly full of posts asking for recommendations for a plumber to change a tap, a decorator, joiner to build flat pack furniture etc, etc.

 

[betweenthelines]

If the government had had anything about them, they would have known a long time ago that the stress on deliveries was coming and perhaps have done something sooner about it e.g. mobilising the army drivers earlier

But, yeah, why would a foreign driver want to come here to pee in to a bottle and park up in a layby for a pittance.

Plenty of issues that Labour could use to beat Boris over the head with

But the industry did feck all about the problem! If an industry can't sort itself out, why expect the Government to?

Do you expect Boris and Rishi to solve your starling problem?

Perhaps the hauliers thought "Well if we do nothing, they'll have to let more overseas drivers come in, and we can keep wages low"

In ten years we've gone from "Bloody foreigners coming over here taking our jobs" to "Why won't those bloody foreigners come over here and take our jobs?"

 

[wrenbird]

The Skills Shortage is very much a real issue across many sectors of the economy, especially in industries that require physical work. Trades type skills based careers haven't been pushed over the last 30 years, they haven't been seen as attractive sectors to get into. We now have generations that don't want hard work, It amazes me the amount of people who can't do the basics of DIY tasks, the local facebook groups are constantly full of posts asking for recommendations for a plumber to change a tap, a decorator, joiner to build flat pack furniture etc, etc.

Bit off topic, but, himself had football on last week, West Ham playing somebody foreign? Jarrod Bowen came on as a sub and the commentator mentioned that Jarrod was born and brought up in Herefordshire, and had returned to Herefordshire for the summer break. He also said that when the players returned to training, David Moyes could not believe how fit Jarrod Bowen was, far and away the fittest player to return to the club, so he asked him what his training regime had been while he was away, Jarrod said nothing special, just a bit of farm work now and then.
Presumably the other players had found something a bit more sedentary to do over the summer.