[claudiawerner]

As someone who's about to graduate with an MEng degree: No, I haven't done real work yet, and I hope that most employers don't share this attitude which gets me in a catch-22. I need to have worked to find work, but to work I need to have found work. The only option seems to be these "graduate jobs", a large percentage of which demand arcane tests modelled after IQ tests and tedious timed calculator tests in order to even consider me.

Graduated with 70%+ with the title "Master of Engineering"? Not good enough, do an IQ test to get the job. Write a compiler for a self-designed embedded language for your final project? Not good enough, you forgot how to concatenate lists in MATLAB. Oh, and you don't get to find out your prospective salary until you have an offer; until then, you'll be happy to know it's "competitive", whatever that means.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'd recommend anyone go to university unless they want to stay in academia or something. I'm not convinced it's worth the hassle if this kind of job search is the end result, and if you're going there for knowledge, you're better off not getting yourself into debt with a 4% interest rate.

[swiley]

Who is recommending university for knowledge (at least in STEM?) If knowledge is all you want you’re far better off going to Wikipedia, libgen, sci hub or even buying the books. Heck if you really need lectures for the classes (or from researchers even!) you can legally watch them for free on YouTube!

University helps shape you socially and drag you through some cultural stuff that a lot of people would otherwise ignore, that’s about it.