Career decisions

WHILE MANY people will choose a higher education course purely on the basis of exploring a subject that interests them, it's also worth thinking about your long-term career goals too.

Making the right choice will give you the right foundations to enter the jobs that interest you.

If you know you want to be a doctor, then you take a degree in medicine, and if you want to work in fashion, there would not be a lot of point in doing an engineering degree.

Some jobs do demand a specific subject degree, particularly in the fields of science and engineering while others recommend a degree in a broadly-related area.

The Graduate Prospects website contains lots of useful advice and allows you to profile different careers and the qualifications recommended for them. You can also view the career profiles on the Aimhigher website.

A professional body is set up to oversee the activities of a particular profession, for example the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

A statutory body is set up through Act of Parliament, so that there is a legal requirement for a body to have oversight of a particular area, for example, the General Medical Council.

A regulatory body is recognised by the government as being responsible for the regulation or approval of a particular area.

This form of accreditation for students may lead to a right to practice a profession, exemption from professional examinations and/or membership of a professional body. As an example, the General Medical Council accredits programmes in medicine.

So if you know you want a specific professional job, contact the relevant professional body, which will be able to tell you the courses they accredit, the skills they require and where you can study these courses. Do this before you make your final choice.

Obviously degrees in related areas may well prove more useful in your future career than others.

Conversion law courses exist for graduates of any discipline, which take a year and give you the opportunity of studying a course you particularly fancy beforehand; some law firms prefer people who have studied a non-law degree first.

There are also postgraduate courses in teaching, social work, journalism, publishing and even medicine which you can go on to study from a wide range of degree types. Some employers also provide specialist training for graduates – accountancy, banking, IT and the civil service, for example.

Getting on for two thirds of graduate vacancies are not dependent on the course studied.

Although a degree does provide you with in-depth specialist knowledge of a subject, the process of studying for that degree and the skills it teaches you, plus the wider social experience of university or college life, are what many employers want.

So, unless you know that you need to study a particular subject for a particular career, the choice is yours.

We welcome your comments and feedback on this article.