In the present contribution, we discuss the relevance of fully self-consistent HF plus RPA (or HF-BCS plus QRPA) calculations based on Skyrme effective forces, and their impact on our present knowledge of basic properties of the nuclear equation of state, like the incompressibilty and the symmetry energy. Finally, we address the problem whether correlations beyond mean field can alter the picture obtained at the (Q)RPA level. Throghout the paper, the comparison with the results obtained using Gogny forces, or RMF Lagrangians, will be emphasized.