Re: More!
"All well and good if you can get a job without the degree but when I went to uni to get my degree it was because no bugger would even invite me to interview without one."
It's all about planning, isn't it?
Work hard at school, identify your strengths. If one of them is engineering, start making stuff at home because when you go to interview for an apprenticeship at RR or Quinetic, there's a lot of competition.
Or be like our neighbour's son who is good at business studies and maths and has gone straight to a job on the career path at a bank. He's been preparing the ground for 2 years.
This is the secret middle class advantage - telling their kids why they need to work at school, encouraging them, and then watching them either going to U to do the best paying jobs - law, engineering, dentistry, medicine, maths, physics - or getting onto the career ladder early.
If people think of comp sci as a bit like doing a degree in botany, they might be more realistic. Very few farmers have degrees in botany, important as it is for farming.