A difficult conversation

‘You’re welcome to come home if uni not for you - but you will immediately need to sign on with the job Centre to claim universal credit as you are an adult and need to pay your way from the beginning as you look for a job.’

uc will force him to job search / get a job or he he will be sanctioned.

don’t give him money. Don’t do his washing. Expect him to contribute to chores in the house including cooking and cleaning. Treat him as the grown up that he is. He is no longer a little boy.

don’t let him freeload off of you. Set a clear boundary of needing a minimal amount if ‘keep’ each week until he successfully gets a job when you will turn review the rate accordingly.

letting ‘kids’ aka as adults once they are past 18 sponge off you - as they float about with airy fairy ideas of maybe doing ‘you tube’ is not setting them up for the harsh reality of how the world works. Life costs and to afford food and shelter he needs to work. It may be a minimal wage job - it may not be his dream job but beggars can not be choosers. He has to find something immediately be it cafe or shop work.

you get out of life what you put in and nothing comes for free.

the conversation is as hard as you want to make it. I would be direct and clear and set the expectations so he can make an informed choice about his life.

Nailed it.

I haven’t RTFT so unsure if PP have mentioned this. However, if he has passed full year(s) of his course then he will be able to get a certificate which varies depending how many years he completed. My DS dropped out after 2nd year and it has been the absolute making of him. He has a career he enjoys and is good at, everyone he bumps in to from home comments to us about how he is absolutely loving life. All is not lost, OP.

There might be a chance to pivot to a different degree within the same institution? My friend started off doing history, moved onto politics in the 2nd year, and graduated in the 3rd year with a sociology degree 😀 Other posters have offered advice about getting a certificate or diploma in higher education to use as credit at another institution or the Open University.

I'd be concerned he was feeling down tbh. So my approach would be to welcome him back home and discuss how he envisaged it all working.

I wouldn't be demanding money from him but I'd be telling him that my expectation is for him to find work / identify further study etc and then a further discussion around what he should be expected to pay for and what you will support him with and for how long

So I'd be clear but also kind. Unless he's a real pain in the arse with a long history of fucking about, he's a very young adult, he's your child and he's worth helping out without being all guns blazing

I dropped out of full time uni at end of year 2. I struggled with the coursework deadlines and if I'm honest, the social side of it as well (I was at Uni at 17 and didn't have the confidence to try to join in with the drinking/socialising in pubs, student unions etc).

I was also in a relationship that was not good for me. Spending every spare minute with them and day dreaming about getting a place together and shutting out the outside world.

Life just does not work like that.

You have to work for what you want.

I think some tough love is needed OP.

You are doing your son no favours indulging him. Youtube is simply not a viable option, I'm sure i read for every 100,000 views a video earns a £100 if there's advertising and sponsors. The viewing figures required to sustain an income to live would be in the millions per week and no offence, it's simply not going to happen.

He wants to do You Tube but about what subject? What would the content be about, surely he must have something in mind?

Would the content be about something he is passionate about?

This was in better economic times

This happened to my sibling in year 2.

My parents first visited them in the uni location, to seek to establish how they were more generally (down and with relationship problems, doing badly with and not enjoying studies, but not depressed) and discuss their options and suggest some pros/cons of each option.

Having done that, sibling was keen to drop out of the course and remain where they were living. Parents had the hard conversation about what further short term financial support they’d provide (small anount of money and/or free housing for a short time if returned to theirs) and expectation that sibling would find work or seek benefits. Offered non financial help.

sibling found work with prospects quickly, and lived in their uni town for a number of years. Sibling likes their career choice overall and has done well at it, but in retrospect thinks working harder and completing a degree could have opened other doors.

Can I just ask - how much do you know about becoming an influencer/youtuber - because I know a fair bit, and unless you get incredibly, incredibly lucky, 99.99% of content creators will never make a living from it. There are literally millions of people out there who will never make it. Think of actors, or singers - the success rate is impossibly low. And unless you perform a miracle and put out something that goes globally viral, most content creators who now earn a living full time worked alongside content creation for years. It's not a first step career option to make money at all. He might as well have told you he's going to become a famous actor.

ask him what software he plans on using to edit with... sounds like he's put zero thought into it at all, don't get me wrong people can make money, but if you copy what everyone else is doing you either need to be doing it better or offering something in unique to you.

I would remind him that this is the most difficult stage of any degree and if he can push on through it should get better and easier

I agree with this poster. Ask to see what his first step will be and a realistic timescale for it all. Ask him how he will pay for accommodation etc if he leaves university. Make it clear that you support his endeavours but not financially.
My son was determined to leave school in S6(Scotland). I supported his right to make that decision and explained he had to have something to go to before he left. Needless to say, it didn't happen and off he went to university at the end of the year.
It's a difficult one but you have to make it clear that it's all down to him if he leaves uni.

They went to uni and were supported OR they worked 40hrs a week in a paying job

That’s very harsh and would have let out a lot of entry level admin jobs / apprenticeships. I think I’ve only had one job where I’ve been contracted for a 40 hour week. Would have been better to expect full time work, not an arbitrary number of hours.

Alot of employers like a degree (in anything) and only accept people with degrees like financial institutions. It really is worth finishing even if he doesn't realise it.

In your shoes I’d be super enthusiastic about his YouTube plan and ask to see his business plan and how he’s going to fund his own place in the meantime, maybe point to universal credit so that he can apply and see that he’d be entitled to next to nothing and would have to job search 30 hours a week until he’s bringing in a liveable wage. That might focus his efforts a bit.

If he suggests that you would of course continue to fund him I’d point out that there will always be a room for him in your house, but that he needs to be working (so that he can pay you rent) or studying to improve his future prospects for that to be an option. He needs a wake up call!

My son stopped A levels midway through to go to college and study something else. He then changed course at college half way through and then dropped out there too, but the understanding was always that if he dropped out he’d have to work. He got a couple of awful jobs that focussed him on finding the right career and is now thriving at 25 in an excellent and well paid job, so I know that quitting his course was the right thing for him. But lounging about pretending to be a YouTuber was never on the menu.

Would he be better off doing an apprenticeship in a trade rather than book learning for a specific area? You mentioned that he had exams in January that he's deferred and maybe this is his roundabout way of not being able to deal with the course load.

Could this be a path for him?

Are you for real? You think buying a camera on a whim is going to make him a content creator that he can earn a living from. Serious content creators don’t just for it for a hobby because they are not good anything else in life. Professional content creators are only successful because they could other things and be equally good at it.

You are indulging his nonsense flakeyness and this won’t end well.

I don't see why it's cruel to tell him to support himself if he wants to drop out. My dad did exactly that - and suggested that I would owe him money now, seeing as he had spent his hard earned money funding a degree that I wasn't going to finish.

Guess what, I finished uni 🤣 and I'm glad I did!

Are you sure he expects you to carry on giving him money, if he isn't at uni? Most people would realise that the money was for studying, not just "because". So you might have nothing to worry about.

If he drops out, he finds his own place, or moves in with you but pays board. Pretty straightforward - I think if you start hand wringing about it (with him), it'll make a bigger issue of it.

Mu mum and dad used to say "We love you no matter what, and there will always be a place for you at ours. We're not a hotel though".

OP, it’s clear that you are trying to be understanding but at the same time you are being too soft.

There is no other way to say this, but your son is behaving like a snowflake. Either he needs to study for qualifications full time or work full time.

Youtube is not a career for vast majority of people. Statistically speaking, your son is probably one of those people that has 0 talent for content creation but thinks he’ll be the next Mr. Beast. You need to tell him straight.

The fact that he’s only working two days and moaning about not enjoying it tells you that this is going in the wrong direction. Be careful or you will eventually end up with an unemployed or under employs 30 something man child living at home who hasn’t found anything he ‘enjoys’.

Hi OP, I worked as an academic in a university for about 10 years until recently so thought I’d give a bit of practical advice about options.

Firstly he won’t have nothing to show for it if he drops out - if he completed and passed his first year of a three year standard degree (which he almost definitely will have done to now be in his second year) then he will get a Certificate in Higher Education to acknowledge what he achieved in his first year. This is a Level 4 qualification.

Secondly, he could consider suspending his studies rather than dropping out entirely. This would give him until September to see if he can get a job and if leaving is the right decision. If not then his place is held for him to go back to in September. He would need to discuss the financial implications (tuition fees and accommodation fees for this year) but it might be worth looking in to.

Another option is to see if he can stick it out until the end of this academic year which, in reality, is only a few more months. Instead of a Certificate in Higher Education he would get a Diploma in Higher Education. He could then take a full year out with fewer financial implications as he won’t need to pay tuition fees and won’t be tied into a housing contract. In this time he could try to find a job and make a more informed decision about whether he returns for his final year. I’d also be encouraging him to find out if he could do a placement year as part of his studies - it doesn’t need to be related to his degree and would be done in the year after his second year and before his third. They are paid. Again there would be no obligation to return for his final year but it might give some breathing space away from ‘studying’ without losing his place.

Finally, if he does decide to drop out, all is not lost. I used to support people returning to finish their degree all the time, whether they had studied with us previously or not. You always keep the credits/modules you completed and can use this in the future to get into another course and reduce the amount of studying you need to do to be awarded a full degree. This is really common as life often gets in the way during three years of studying!

his personal tutor will be best placed to advise on the specific options available to him but I wanted to reassure you that he wont have nothing to show for his time so far, there are other options, and all is not lost. He’s not the first and won’t be the last to have a wobble at this stage.

I have asked him what his plan is and he just keeps saying he doesn't know or things like, "Maybe I will do YouTube"

That’s not a difficult conversation. All of mine were told it was very simple. They went to uni and were supported OR they worked 40hrs a week in a paying job and we didn’t care if that was on a checkout or petrol station etc. We didn’t care have done try it on with things like the YouTube stuff etc but that’s very simple - that’s great, but that’s a HOBBY until and unless it becomes a supporting full time job. Very hard to do it as a hobby if we are not supporting your internet access etc🤣.

I do sympathise. It’s not easy for everyone to know what they want to do when leaving school. That meant some of ours bounced around different uni degrees trying to find a fit, or bounced in and out of uni while trying to work it out. But our rule, and very simple conversation, was if not in uni you get a 40hr/week job that is not a self-indulging hobby your wishing is a job.