To think uni was a way for parents to get their young adult kids to leave home?

Yes and no - when they are at uni they aren't there in the vacations and they mostly aren't financially independent. It was ever thus. After the 1980s the shift towards kids returning home after uni started in earnest and we are now seeing more commuting from home to uni.

I'm over 60 - loads of my cohort at uni met future partners at uni and had children in their 20s. A very high number didn't even a token effort at a career before children and/or didn't go back to work after maternity leave/took career break. I felt like a maverick for doing what I felt was the right thing to do with higher education.

This.

It was an socially acceptable way of getting out of a pretty difficult home life.

This is really sad

@Thegrassroots26 dd3 (dc4) is in year 13 and desperate to leave home and go to university. She doesn't care about which course particularly or having a huge student loan. In fact she has an offer from St Andrews (we are near London) and she'd have to do an extra year. She hasn't even visited.

They get a partner, get pregnant, get a housing association house - I know a lot who've done that!

Maybe for their sons, but for their daughters in the past it was marriage.
It hasn’t been that long since women were able to attend University, and even less long since it was allowed but heavily discouraged.

Yes, my parents made it clear that I could come home for the holidays but once I’d graduated I’d have to get my own place and be socially and financially independent. I chose teaching because it was a secure, regular income with a pension as I knew I was on my own from then on.

In some ways it was good as I had to be self sufficient. I moved to a different part of the country and got on with life but I felt sad when I became a mum and didn’t have my parents round the corner for support when other mums had extended family to lean on. I never have asked them for anything even when my husband lost his job and we were really struggling - that would’ve seemed like failure.

What do you mean less going ?
It was a very small % that went before Tony Blair education education, education.

My parents needed us to work and bring money in, like their parents did before them.

I went to Uni in the mid 90s. I think it was positive for both the parents and the kids in that it was a structured, supported way of moving out. I came back for the long holidays, but never moved back home full time, as I stayed in a house share in my Uni city.

Someone asked what happened before a lot of people went to Uni. I'm guessing a lot more people got married in their early 20s and moved out then?

I think a massive chunk of jobs uni prepares people for will be done by AI in five to ten years time. Mixed up with work and study online, and the gig economy, I think the world of work/higher education will be unrecognizable. But yeah, my parents couldn't get rid of me fast enough.😂

I wasnt in a uni position in my late teens. My parents did not have the money to support me in a full time course so I had to qualify for my profession part time. As soon as I was finished (age 22) I was promoted to professional grade and able to fly the parental home. It was a tiny 2-up-2-down terrace with 5 of us living there so they were probably quite glad I left. They did make a bit of a "how are we going to manage without your money" show but my mother went back to work part time. I never returned.

Less going? Don’t you mean more? Surely more go now than in, say, the 70s/80s?

I went to college at 18 in 1984. DM wasn't keen but DF was fully supportive (not having had the opportunity himself).
I couldn't wait to go and am not sure how I would have escaped either parental home (in the nicest way) or small town without that socially acceptable option.

Same with ours, but we just found short-term (usually manky) houseshares. Some people worked in student residences used for tourists or summer schools in the vac and got accommodation as part of the deal.

She looked and applied for a lot of jobs in the uni city but didnt get one, in year one, and student halls were a 41 week contract so she'd have been home for at least 10 weeks anyway.

For some people, maybe.

But it's a very British idea that living away from home is an important part of the university experience. It will always be a good idea for some students, but there's no harm in treating it more like a job you commute to, if you have suitable courses in commuting range.

People spend a lot of money to live in university or student accommodation that doesn't have to meet normal,standards, is often noisy and deficient in daylight, and has been seen as a quick cheap investment opportunity for the last two decades. Disastrous for mental health in many cases. Fine for others

If we are moving away from that expectation, great

My parents live rurally so I don’t know how I ever would have left home if I didn’t go to uni in 2007. There’s pretty much nothing for young people in my area, and even my university was 2 hours away. While I didn’t get much use out of my degree, living away from home with loads of people my age was great.

I grew up in a tiny village and going to uni / halls / flat was the route out. Many returned to the area, but when they did they rented or bought their own house.

I expect my kids to do similar - it might not be uni. Might be college, apprenticeship or employment, but the plan is for them to be living (partly) independently. I'm so over running around after teenagers. I am looking forward to the next stage very much!

But that's her choice. Pretty much everyone I knew in my student days, unless they had a job near their parents' house, either stayed on in their university city for the summer, finding accommodation and jobs, or worked overseas to find travel and/or the next university year. I mean, I always visited my family in the vac, but it was definitely a visit.

My DD is in her 2nd year at uni. She was home ftom mid April until mid September as well as Christmas, so its not a given!

It wasn't even that for me, it was a way of getting out of a very overcrowded and poor household, where there wasn't enough of anything (space, food attention, privacy) to go around.

My series of spartan student rooms filled me with delight, because for the first time in my life, I had a private space, could leave books and notes spread out on a table without having to clear them away for a family meal, could come and go as I pleased in the full knowledge that no one would have swiped the end of my bag of Maltesers while I was gone. Simple pleasures...