In my gap year I had an interesting and fulfilling job earning me £17,000 pa. If I'd stayed working I'd be on at least £20,000pa, probably more.

I'm graduating in May and applying for jobs at the moment and all I'm getting is rejections. All these jobs pay less than the £17,000 (usually around £12,000) I was earning in my gap year and there aren't any on offer which pay more for a new graduate. WTF is that all about? I pay to go to university for three years and I'm in a worse situation than I would be in if I hadn't bothered and had just stayed in the job market! 

No, never say that, university is only a beneficial thing. It may seem like £20,000 is a lot when you are a student but in reality it isn't much at all. Just imagine with a good degree you could be earning double that in a few years.

But that's the problem - I can't. If I'm getting rejected from £12,000 graduate jobs what hope have I got of earning £40K in 2 years? In 2 years I'll be very lucky to be back up to the £17K I was earning pre-degree.

I have a great academic record, I'm predicted a first class degree and I have experience of a management level, high pressure job from my gap year so I'm not an unemployable retard or anything! Perhaps the job market's just taking a serious downturn?

Even so, there is no point of walking out of your degree once you've started and if you are going for a first then you should keep up the good work. If it is a case of the job market taking a downward turn you just need to get a bit more pro-active and edge out the competition. A few years of doing more work for less money is bound to get you noticed in the business world anyway lol.

I'm not planning on walking out - I've only got 2 months left and obviously no job to go to. It's just pretty depressing! Everyone makes out that if you go to uni you'll earn stackloads but it's looking like working the other way for me. Maybe that's just because it's a bad year to be graduating.

What's your degree in?

No, you will earn stackloads, god knows I'm planning to when I leave uni. Just not right now. I think the phrase that fits this well is "it is better to climb a ladder from the bottom rung than get start off in the middle and get stuck" I know as soon as I leave uni I may not get a job in my field for 2-3 years, even then it would be a menial low grade job paying minimum wage, but I also know that in 10 years I will make something of that job and I will be rolling in money and I'm sure you're in the same boat as me. It is better than if I just left with my A-levels, got some job as a chemists assisstant or something and do that for the rest of my career. Uni is the starting block that allows you to climb the career ladder.

BTW, what are you studying and where?

@Legend11 Sociology. Big mistake. I wanted to do something more vocational but people (teachers, careers advisors, etc) were telling me to do an academic degree to "keep my options open". If I'd done a vocational degree in marketing or graphic design or something I doubt I'd be having this problem as everywhere seems to want specialist degrees. Anyone who did something like history, English, sociology, politics, psychology, etc gets to fight over the scraps.

Couldn't you have gone into that same minimum wage job and worked your way up without doing a degree?

Sociology. I put on my CV Plymouth as that's where I'm graduating from. I've been to three unis (Cambridge (hated it), Goldsmiths (got sick of the racial abuse I was receiving) and Plymouth) but obviously don't put that on application forms! Fortunately I could just transfer between the three so my degree's only taking me the three years it's supposed to.

I'm applying for everything I'm qualified to do so I don't think I'm over restricting myself either. 

University is worth it. If your only gonna be working $20,000 jobs anyways then don't bother. But if you want to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or anything like that with a high pay, then the only way is via univerisity.