Going to university soon

All 3 of mine have gone. I always assumed they’d go as all very academic and high achievers. But it’s not for everyone. DC of friends / family tend to go.

Drop outs? Nasty
many very successful people realised uni was for those who needed to go for their chosen profession and those with no idea what they were doing to do. And those successful people knew what they wanted to do didn’t require 3 years studying history or geography or anthropology.

it’s unbelievable that people hold so much value in 3 years studying something random aged 19. So much more is learned by actually getting out there and working.

I say this as someone with a masters degree.

There are many posts about all the middle class teens who leave education and stay in their rooms gaming or anxious and can’t look for work because they are so pampered even uni is too much like hard work!

Two DDs 24 & 21. Eldest went and youngest didn’t. I think it will start to decline as the fees rise and the wage you start to repay the loan has reduced to around £21k and over 40 years not 30.

This. There will be parents of teens who aren't posting about their teens going to uni soon. Obviously the posts which say they are going to uni will be more visible than all the parents posting without teens going to uni!

I actually think the assumption that all kids go to uni is part of a wider problem on Mumsnet of some posters struggling to comprehend that people live different lives to them. You see it on lots of threads - someone will mention some issue with their kids school and a poster will pipe up about it being the school holidays, because if THEIR kids are off school then all kids across the entire world must be too.
I think some people just live very narrow lives and aren't capable of seeing past their own experiences.

100% of kids from one school went to uni? Really? I can’t believe 100% is correct. My eldest went to a top London private school and even there the stats were not that high. Some went travelling indefinitely, some went to exciting places like a cordon bleu chef school in France, some went into family business, some developed mental health problems and bombed exams and either went to crammers for re takes or disappeared.

I don't think every post about teens does talk about going to uni.

I agree that their demographic on mumsnetters makes it more likely that their DC go into higher education.

There is a much higher percentage of posters who are on 6 figure salaries and whose DC were privately educated as well (I'm not part of that demographic).

Every young person I know bar 1 (did apprenticeship) went to university at 18/19. It’s very much a case of what circles you move in (and the example that didn’t was the child of an old friend I haven’t seen for years). Rates at my dc’s 6th form colleges were (dd1) 85% and (dd2) 100%. It’s what you do here. The drop outs wouldn’t have made it to 6th form though!

Anecdotal but between me, my Dh, sister and BIL, only one of us went to uni. So 1 in 4. My niece on dh’s side was the first ever one to go to uni in their family including wider cousins etc but her sister hasn’t. I’m not banking on both my children going, I will just support them no matter what they choose to do and they will always be welcome to live at home or come on holiday with us no matter their circumstances.

Actually dropping my sister off at Uni was what made me adamant I never wanted to go.

the higher education entry rate among UK 18-yr olds peaked at 38% in 2021. It fell back to 36% in 2024. 49% of state school pupils from England had started higher education by age 25 in 2022/23. So the stats are slightly higher than you suggest.

Having said that, MN isn’t a representative sample of the UK. The annual MN census shows it’s a more highly educated and more “middle class” cohort than an average sample of the population. Thus it follows that children of Mumsnetters are more likely to go to uni.