Get your satchel, you're going back to school.

[Workingman]

According to David Willetts, the higher education minister, that's the answer to getting or keeping your job once you are over 60. Go and do a degree and companies will be falling over themselves to employ you, so he says. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/un ... train.html

What illegal substances do people like Willetts partake of?

Has he not noticed that there are more applicants than jobs, at a ratio of 6:1, and that a lot of those jobs are part-time or do not pay a living wage?

Has he not noticed that youth unemployment is at a record high, with a lot of employers claiming that many of them are unemployable due to a lack of skills in literacy and numeracy.

Has he any bloody idea of the lengths HR departments will go to to avoid employing a person over 50, how hard it is even to get a foot in the door?

If anyone needs to go back to school it's "two brains" Willetts.

[Suff]

If anyone needs to go back to school it's "two brains" Willetts.

Dear me no, then he'd have a degree and be "unemployable".......

It is patently stupid. People over 60 who need to work and are in a "pensions gap" have more chance of an income by setting up their own business, buying off Alibaba from China and flogging it on from eBay......

I'm 52 this year. The only reason I can get a job, even in the contracting sphere, is a depth of experience in my field that few people ever gain. I dread to think what chances I would have if I did not have this level of experience. Fortunately when I employ the only criteria I have to work on is ability to get the job done. Less ability, no matter the age and they don't get the job. I don't care how cheap they are, age usually confers more experience.

However, education will do one thing for him. It will move the unemployment statistics. If they're doing a degree then they are not unemployed are they. It's a short term tactic, the so called Third Way which the Netherlands was so lauded for. I note the Netherlands is also in austerity, over budget, still borrowing......

Stupid is as stupid does. In politics putting the over 60's into a 3 year degree course is the equivalent of pushing your problems onto the next government.... Or into a pension....

[pederito1]

I agree that studying for a degree in later life as a means of gaining employment is a nonsense but maybe a good idea with regard to longevity and keeping your neurons on the trot. A fairly sure way of an early demise is to go from a high pressure mentally intensive job to a couch potato overnight.

[TheOstrich]

Speaking as an over-60 yo, my brain has been taxed sufficiently in my lifetime and to be honest, I no longer have the mental skills to absorb new learning. I find it increasingly difficult keeping up to date in the part time job I currently undertake. When I eventually give up the day job - which could be as early as this summer, depending on finances - I think I'll be happy to quietly vegetate. If you have the drive and determination to continue in employment, and you enjoy the job, well good for you, but I'm afraid I can't tick those boxes.

Gawd help the next generation who may not be able to financially retire in their 60's..

[Suff]

Gawd help the next generation who may not be able to financially retire in their 60's..

Well they'll have to channel their finances into savings for their retirement instead of into new phohe's, TV's, Cars, homes, etc, etc, etc, Of course they didn't live very long after pension age either, but that's another story.

Come to think of it, isn't that what everyone who was not landed gentry or a person who was going to inherit wealth, did before the Dole, DSS and a state pension?????

Not going to help the economy or anyone caught in the current Ponzi scheme though????

[Fugitive]

I agree that studying for a degree in later life as a means of gaining employment is a nonsense but maybe a good idea with regard to longevity and keeping your neurons on the trot. A fairly sure way of an early demise is to go from a high pressure mentally intensive job to a couch potato overnight.

The majority of students who were over sixty when I got my degree with the OU were doing it to keep 'their neurons on the trot' Pederito. The young ones were aged from eighteen upwards and studying while working full time to better their careers or with a young family readying themselves towards the time they could return to work.

What nonsense

[cromwell]

What illegal substances do people like Willetts partake of?

Unfortunately I don't think they need any.
We seem to be ruled by a generation of politicians who have never done anything in their lives apart from talk.
He is just living on Planet Westminster, like the rest of them.
The realities of employment for the over 50's? It doesn't lie in well paid jobs unless you have a unique saleable skill; it's far more likely to be working for the minimum wage in a supermarket - if you're lucky.

[Workingman]

The realities of employment for the over 50's? It doesn't lie in well paid jobs unless you have a unique saleable skill; it's far more likely to be working for the minimum wage in a supermarket - if you're lucky.

Oh God! Don't try that if you have an "ology". You will not get past the 'bin it' filter. The incumbents are scared stiff of you.