To not understand people who talk about being the first in their family to go to uni like it’s a badge of honour?

What does being a mother have to do it, do you plan to start every assignment with “As a mother…”?

My grandad started in this country as a road sweeper. My mother left school at 16 to get (arranged) married. My family are big on family business rather than academia. So yes it was a pretty big deal when I went to uni 20 odd years ago and became a lawyer. It may be more expected than in previous generations but it represented our family being able to feel established and have financially stable careers than previous generations.

Ancestors of mine were amongst the first to study Philosophy at Lampeter University in the 1830s. Nearly 200 years ago. You on the other hand, sound completely clueless.

Well, hopefully university will help you broaden your horizons and who knows, maybe even your children’s prospects.

(I became a mother at 16 as well and I’m honestly baffled at how dismissive you are of other people’s accomplishments, but I suspect this post is just a riling exercise)

I agree. Uni is mostly meaningless now. I did a law degree, my parents didn’t go to uni. I found it pretty easy, I did it while working full time too as I went a couple of years after my peers.

Unless you’re doing something like maths or astrophysics I’m not particularly impressed by degrees. Though maybe even those are made straight forward to pass as well?

It never even crossed my mind that my mum and dad hadn’t done uni. We just live different lives in different generations. My dad was successful in the fire service, but didn’t do “uni”, he had a trade prior to that.

Agreed. OP clearly has no awareness that there are many disadvantaged backgrounds. You don’t need to have substance abuse or alcoholism in your family to experience challenges and obstacles in accessing further and higher education. It is not that easy to break cycles of generational trauma and poverty. How about letting people feel proud of their achievements, even if your own privilege doesn’t allow you to understand how huge a deal it is for them.
Nasty thread indeed.

It was beyond my families expectations to even think about university it just wasn’t for us

I didn’t go until I was in my mid 30’s (in my 50’s now) and felt really sad when I graduated that my grandparents were not there as they woudl have been unbelievably proud and I know if they were still alive they would when dropped it into every conversation they had be it relevant or not

I’m still the only one and I am hopping ds will go to university and become a doctor (the dream 😁 he has no desire to become a doctor but I’m working on it)

so yes it’s a badge of honour if you want to refer to it in that way

Maybe when you've done 3-4 years of uni, you might have more understanding of what an achievement it is.

When you've juggled assignments and part time work (or in your case family) you might understand more of why it's difficult for some. You might develop some critical thinking skills.

You don't ever know what has gone on in someone else past - nobody here owes you their story of neglect or abuse just to prove they acheieved something you deem worthy. None of us went to university to prove anything to you (or anyone else) but for ourselves. I hope when your children go to university you take great pleasure and pride in their achievements.

What about when you turn up and find everyone else is far more intelligent, mature confident and worldly wise in comparison to you? When you can’t contribute to seminars or discussions because their learning is far in advance of yours. When you find they somehow know all the little secrets to life you can’t just google.

of course you might just sign up at your local university and rock up every few days to the university of Essex or wherever, attend a lecture, drive yourself home after wards and forget about it.

that is a very marginal (and not necessarily very value add) version of “getting a degree”

Yes, it's a big deal. I work in higher education and the proportion of 'first in family' students is a pretty important statistic that universities will report on and monitor as part of their widening participation activities.

It's pretty well documented that access to higher education is harder for those that don't have family that have experienced it themselves. Figuring out which uni to apply for, how to navigate all the different stages etc.

I pointed out I’ve mentioned a hundred times on this thread that having abusive/drug addict parents is a massive barrier despite not experiencing that myself.

The problem is that abuse/neglect doesn’t automatically lead to poor achievement at school/Uni.
It might do if the child/teen ends rebelling, not going to school etc…
But you can be abused/neglected afd still get very good grades (and then abuse is usually never spotted at school). You might even have parents who abuse you AND expect you to do well at school.

Statistically, your mother’s education level has a huge impact on your outcomes in life. In reality, the father is also important, but this information is much more difficult to collect consistently, so mother’s education is traditionally used for studies.

If your parents didn’t go to university, you are less likely to go to university. That might not be true for any one family, but it is true in a societal level. We know working class parents can be supportive and encouraging and highly educated parents can be abusive assholes who kick their kids out the second it is legal. This is about generalizations, not individual cases.

that it is easier for some young adults to walk the path to university does not devalue their achievement. They still have to do the work. We can still give a little extra acknowledgement to the people who may have had an extra challenge to get there.

So let me get this right, @Kyrgyzstan , only those from pukka deprived backgrounds get to be publicly proud of their achievements?

How would this go in a social situation? How would it be framed so as to be OK in your eyes? How would you know, seeing as you're the one exercised by this?

What a weaselly, mean-spirited thread.

And you’re still missing the huge point that they got TRAINING. That their training might have been vocational but they’re not working in a low skilled job. But one that required them to read, wrote, have soecific skills theyre using everyday.
The very fa to that those jobs didn’t require a degree then but do now is telling you they are skilled jobs.

That’s not the same than someone who didn’t go further than a GCSE.

And btw, I was abused/neglected as a child. I have cptsd as a result. That didn’t stop me from getting a VERY good Master (30 years ago when getting a master was very unusual).
It fucked my life up. Not my education.

It feels the way you look at things is full of preconceived ideas on what is or isn’t a hindrance to studying/going to Uni.

Yet your barriers were so great you DIDNT go despite clearly wanting to.

Nope. It was me seeking to establish exactly what I said. I’ll copy/paste as you appear to have missed it: you haven’t been to uni and don’t have a good job, so have little in the way of academic or professional achievements. Perhaps acknowledge that you’re not in a position to sneer at other people for being proud of their own.

Nothing to do with ‘benefit scroungers’. Everything to do with your own personal lack of achievement, by your own stated metrics.

As others have said, having no one with experience of university to guide you and support you means you’re at a disadvantage.

keep arguing all you want. The real world continues to measure first in family and celebrate the social mobility it brings

But whether or not you think it’s a worthy thing, do you accept “first in family” is a formal, common indicator of social mobility and future earning potential, widely used by the university sector, regulator and government?!?