Quote Originally Posted by malc-c View Post
Uhmm interesting.. Im sure there was a post here from Mel stating how good her life is having graduated witrh honours.... She probably had so many proposals of marriage after that, that she deleted the post
I'm glad you saw that as well, I was begining to think I had imagined it !!!

I'm not going to take sides in the debate over gaining qualifications or not is a good thing. However if you look back several decades the old practice of passing on skills by being a "mate" with a seasoned tradesman was the only way skills were kept going.
To a certain extent I think the lack of formal qualifications has a lot to do with age. I left school in 1976 and hardly anyone went to university and the first time I came across a "computer" it was a teletype connected to the mainframe at Norwich City College.

I worked for British Telecom for 29 years including a full apprenticeship but I dont actually have anything on paper. As part of our appenticeship we took a City and Guilds course in Telecommunications which for the first three years included four subjects....

Mathematics
Electrical Principles
Telephony and Telegraphy
Computing

... to pass the exam you had to have Maths, Electical Principles and one of the last two subjects. The final year of the course was day release rather than a 16 week block release and there was only time for three subjects so Computing was dropped as BT (or Post Office Telecommunications as it was then) would only accept a pass in Telephony and Telegraphy. At that point I sort of lost interest especially as it was a 15 hour day including travelling

During the remainder of my time with BT I did loads of internal courses and aquired a great many skills but you dont get bits of paper that have any recognised qualifications on them.

I admire all those that, like Mel have worked hard studying and are now reaping the rewards, and able to have a lifestyle only some of us can dream of. Its always worth having a qualification that you can fall back on, but I don't think that its right that people like T.Jackson should come down on Skimask so heavily... I don't see him as advocating that people shouldn't go to uni, more that he is proud to be in a position he is in without having to through what others have. I also have no formal IT qualifications, yet I'm holding down a job that pays the average IT salary in the UK and have demonstarted that my experience has out performed the person they previously employed, who had an MCSE !

The answer here is that its all down to the individual
I fully agree. I wish I had been born 15-20 years later so that I would have had the opportunity to go to university but it wasnt a common thing to do when I left school. you just got a job with an apprenticeship and stayed there until you retired..... then the world changed !!!