It's the size of your pay packet the UK's interested in, not your skills

It's the size of your pay packet the UK's interested in, not your skills - World: "THE British Government has been criticised for changing rules that allow highly skilled migrants, including many Australians, to live and work in Britain.

The changes place more importance on earnings and education than work experience and could mean that 30 per cent of prospective migrants living and working in Britain will not be eligible to extend their visa"

(Via Sydney Morning Herald.)

I'm not keen on the UK's approach, sure this is a "highly skilled" visa, but there's no check to see if the university qualifications that count for so much actually have any relevance to the "skilled" role you are applying for. All in all, it smacks of laziness on the UK immigration department, trying to make things simpler by only accepting University qualifications.

In the IT field, the (arguably even more unfair) money side of the equation is not so much of an issue, but on the education side unless you want to go into management, or potentially programming, a University degree is not very useful.

Norway (and Oz) seem to have more sensible requirements for skilled visas.