career decision

Most important facts of all: Employment is paid work. A person's paid work is his or her job. 'Education is employment's feeder!
Every task, in every job requires a combination of general or specific hard and soft skills with applicable general or specific knowledge in different proportions, some tasks demand higher or more hard skills, some lower or less, some demand more soft skills, some demand less, some demand lower or less general or specific knowledge and others demand higher or more knowledge, and thus, every career decision involves looking at your education from work's point of view, think of what will you come to offer to the world of work in terms of knowledge and skills not who you are or what you are studying and in return, you will most likely get what you want from work, that is, who you wanted to be in the long run, your career!

What are hard skills?
Hard skills are self or trained abilities to perform specific job tasks.

What are soft skills?
Soft skills are abilities applicable to all jobs that a person develops through educational, social, economic and physical environmental influences rather than being taught.

What is knowledge?
Knowledge is a theoretical or practical understanding of general or specific subjects.

What is experience and expertise?
Experience is the normal practical contact and regular exploitation of real job tasks using area/domain-specific knowledge and skills over any period of time. Normal and regular exploitation of tasks leads to area/domain-specific normal performance.
Some school leavers and graduates will have minimal practical contact at all by the time they finish education, most will have none!

What is expertise?
Expertise is the high level of skills or knowledge acquired through intense and regular exploitation of real job tasks using area/domain-specific knowledge and skills over a long time; Expertise leads to area/domain-specific elevated performance, in other words, well above normal experience performance.
So you see experience and expertise do not mean the same.
Some jobs require no experience, some minimum experience and others more expertise.
Not a single school leaver or graduate will have expertise by the time one finishes education!

The reality is, all employers are more or less the same as they share in common:

1. System of rules set of principles, procedures or instructions that control employees actions as expressed on employment contracts.
2. Hierarchy of authority - low, middle, top tiers of management and delegation of responsibilities from top to bottom.
3. Impersonal - nobody is indispensable, employers are enterprises, they can fire an employee completely, they can fire and then re-hire under different often less favourable terms but as exception to the norm, with management discretion, employers can be family like up to a point.
4. Rigid allocation of roles by specialization - every employee sticking to doing one tiny thing daily as per job description which over a long period of time can become boring!

Regulated professions are occupations with binding (unavoidable) qualifications requirements and legal restrictions to practice, before you can commence, you must pass specific exams at whatever dictated level and register with a relevant regulator. If you fail to adhere to expected standards of practice, you get struck off, that is, suspended or restricted from performing your duties for a fixed period, and at times depending on severity, permanently removed from register and not be allowed into that profession indefinitely. Unregulated professions are self-regulating without binding qualifications requirements or legal restrictions to practice.

As you have read, 'an employee self or otherwise, serves the master(s) whoever that be'. Satisfaction comes from serving in a way that shows you are good at what you do.
scenario
Imagine you are a football striker on lucrative contract but you don't score goals, fans will give you stick, chanting 'you don't know what you are doing', say you are a doctor on good salary but cannot treat patients, there will be flood of complaints, you surely won't get any job satisfaction if you were the aforementioned striker or doctor, would you?

Horizontal career progression is to hierarchy of knowledge or skills. You progress horizontally and accordingly command more compensation in pay package or wages for acquired knowledge and skills.
Some careers more than others have clear progression path, some have not.
example:
Horizontal natural career progression of a doctor.
A doctor starts as a medical student, then qualified supervised (junior) doctor after, then unsupervised senior doctor after on the job training and ultimately if one wants to can take the continuous training general or specialist route as General Practitioner (GP) or consultant or Staff grade and Associate Specialist (SAS) doctor respectively.

Vertical career progression is to hierarchy of authority. You are promoted and accordingly command more compensation in pay package or wages for span of control, that is, the number of people you supervise or for retention purposes. Believe it or not when it comes to promotion, exposure and image are well ahead of performance! You have to be seen and market yourself as promotion material, actually, the top-notch people rarely get promoted, who in his/her right mind will promote the best perfoming team member?!

As a matter of choice, many professionals tend do stay in the same job at the same level amass experience and don't bother about progression as often progression does tend to move people away from what they are really good at and enjoy doing.

If you are undecided on what career to pursue or considering a career change, at any point, get or stay in a stopgap job, it could be a stepping stone for your next career, a way to avoid unnecessary gaps in employment that you have to explain to would-be employers later, if you are between the 16-24 demographic, a stopgap job will keep you away from ending up being a sample on statistics with the Not in Education, Employment and Training (NEET) tag and ultimately it will keep you off the dole, living on means tested benefits .

On every phase of formal education, students have opportunities to add to their reserves more background knowledge and age appropriate skills.
The more the accurate, active, appropriate and sufficient background knowledge one has, the better one is equipped with:

1. The ability to grasp the full meaning of variety of things.
2. The ability to fully utilize gained skills and learn new ones.
3. The ability to unlock new ideas and experiences that lie ahead.

The certificates one receives as a proof of successful completion of a phase of education or training from an officially recognized institution are qualifications.

Only 7% of UK population is privately educated using own economic capital; yet they account for more than half of the top level of most professions, meaning, the remaining 93% that attend mostly non-selective state schools compete for the remainder, if you are one of the 7%, lucky you, if otherwise, tough, you have to work harder, 'if you can't beat them, join them', the 7% won't lower their standards to accommodate you, you have to up your game to or above their level, win-win, you cannot rely on impossible to implement quotas, win-lose Robin Hood effect social policies to take the opportunities from the affluent students and give them to the disadvantaged.

If you are one of the 93% that is stuck in a relatively under resourced, non selective school, cannot buy the best textbooks or afford extra tuition, reach out to your better-off peers that are willing to share knowledge, ask them to share with you their school or extra tuition materials, compare and contrast what you are learning, add what you are missing, it will enrich your learning experiences greatly.

1. Intensity of focus, students across the board concentrate on subject topics that are required to make up the grades on standardized tests and exams.
2. Homogeneity, that is, we all study the same or similar courses, attend the same or similar classes, attend the same or similar schools, colleges or universities, read the same or similar assigned or recommended books and so forth.

The creator of this website was an ordinary-ish student that could not afford private tutors, he owes so much to all the teachers who used their free time to answer his many questions that were beyond their assigned duties, free of charge. His advice to any of you from similar background as he was, is, 'approach subject teachers with any questions you have, even if they do not directly teach your class, you'd be surprised by their wealth of knowledge and willingness to share it!

Informal learning is to self-taught knowledge.
Even with teachers' best efforts, explicit taught knowledge alone is never enough to make you a well-rounded human being capable of holding conversations and understanding of topics beyond the classroom. For anything you are not taught in the classroom, offset by implicitly teaching yourself through other sources namely books, exhibitions, forums, magazines, newspapers, journals and so forth. Besides, self-taught knowledge is what gives you originality and differentiates you from everyone else and also the reason why we have inventors, innovators, wealth-builders and so forth, the intellectually curious that learnt beyond what they were taught.

1. Communication - speaking, writing and listening.
2. Work ethic - willingness to work, work does not have to be a chore.
3. Flexibility - priorities change, the willingness to accommodate changes is important.
4. Adaptability - world of work is constantly changing, change with it or wither and die.
5. Leadership - stepping up and taking the lead when needed.
6. Teamwork - Working together in harmony to achieve a common goal efficiently and effectively.
7. Personal motivation - intrinsically, there is that little annoying or pleasant person inside everyone of us that is nudging and nagging us to get or do something.
8. Organization - without organization, you have chaos, the more organized the better.
9. Time management - punctuality, prioritization of tasks, you cannot do everything, you have to rank tasks.
10. Cultural awareness - we live and work in a multicultural society, you must appreciate cultural differences.
11. Commercial awareness (business acumen, business/client focus) - the understanding of an enterprise's activities in the context of wider environment surrounding it.

To recap from the definition, soft skills are not taught but develop through educational, social, economic and physical environmental influences which can be limited for some especially if you are from disadvantaged background, the trick is, observe how the other half lives, namely, the affluent, as in every society, they are the dominant and call the shots, that is, deciding how things should be done in society, learn directly or indirectly from them similar way to learning enrichment above.

Further education is the intermediate education, normally taking place between the ages of 16 and 18, apart from 'A' levels or equivalent Scottish Highers, Welsh and Scottish Baccalaureates, International Baccalaureates whose purpose is to prepare students for entry into higher levels of specialized study at higher education institutions, unless, hard skills are taught as in vocational, apprenticeship training and so forth, the remainder of further education is like a middle child suffering from identity crisis as it has no clearly recognised and shared core purpose and thus not worth pursuing at all!

One important point to remember is: In higher education, learners are consumers not students!
You buy courses based on 'caveat emptor', let the buyer beware, a principle that you, a student as a buyer are responsible for checking or inspecting the suitability of courses on offer as per prospectus before you buy and on understanding you cannot claim any remedies or refunds from higher education institutions thereafter if it happens what you have learnt is worthless in the real world of work!

The purpose of a bachelor degree also known as an undergraduate degree or equivalent is to give students deep domain specific knowledge and skills.
A degree in a particular field the common terms used are major or specialization often form the basis of an individual's career.

Where the quality of individual alumnus, that is, graduates from the same university knowledge and skills is open for debate, the power of alumni as social capital in an institutionalized form is settled. Rank matters! Attending a top research university open you up to opportunities to mingle with affluent, well-connected teaching staff, home and international students, a priceless network.

If you are intending to pursue Engineering, Science or Technology, universities tend to have the best facilities namely buildings, equipment, and services on offer for learning and experimentation.

University is where you do self-directed learning a skill you are assumed to have developed through supplementary home or library self study whilst in earlier phases of education.

There is neither general agreement among higher education institutions on how academic subjects should be classified nor proper criteria for organizing knowledge into disciplines, however, if you look carefully all knowledge acquisition involves either learning theoretical liberal arts for the sake of it or learning liberal arts with application in mind. Every course on offer is merely liberal arts combinational derivative taught through e-learning, projects, lectures, lab and practical, supervisions, field-trips, seminars, classes and so forth

STEM - Science namely natural sciences Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics alone are pure subjects when you change them into applied form as in applied Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, blend them together, they bear Engineering and Technology. By grouping, education does not feel so confusing, does it?

A broadly accurate principle based on creator of this website's experience are:

1. Choose a university degree course only if there are no acceptable vocational and apprenticeship equivalents and two,
2. Choose a degree course that in itself will give you not only the sort of knowledge and skills that people are willing to pay you fairly well not meagrely for, privately as self-employed or as an employee in a small, medium or large private enterprise, chains or independents, charitable, governmental or non-governmental organization and so forth but also a reasonable return on your investment, as university education is a big investment.

When choosing a university to attend the only thing we tend to consider is the easy bit, that is, getting to a campus, however, we tend to overlook the most important proximity (nearness) to jobs as per degree major/specialization after graduation.

1. East Anglia, the South-East, the East Midlands and Yorkshire are agricultural heartlands.
2. The West Midlands is the industrial heartland.
3. The South East is distinctive for its service industries such as insurance, banking and shipping.

Meaning, you have to explore which sector and divisions of industry your chosen major/specialization is in, namely primary, secondary or tertiary because they will determine geographically where and how close to your university most job opportunities are, the availability of internships or work placement places that are essential to the development of relevant hard skills as university courses are predominantly theory based, or even if lab work is involved, it is a known fact lab never match the real world demands, think of yourself as a car that has passed standardized lab testing with flying colours but guarantees no matching real world on road performance.
You can learn more about where, types of jobs available at present and in the future, locally, regionally, nationwide and internationally through Labour Market Information (LMI).

Never rely too much on Labour market information as it is statistical information based on survey responses not immersion research, often things don't turn out the way people predict due to unforeseen events thereafter!

It is best to use a bachelor's degree to get employed first as employers do set aside a budget for training and development where depending on your role and level you can choose or be advised to pursue a Masters degree or professional equivalent as part of your Continuous Personal Development (CPD) and they will foot part or the whole of the bill and very likely top-up your wages and promotion post-completion.

Unless you are planning to become an academic or a researcher both primarily a preserve of universities; it is not worth pursuing a doctorate degree at all!