Kudos to the OP for posting. There is so much to be learnt from this thread.
(1) English literature degrees are generally useless, aka don't study something at university just because you enjoy it, but because it will help you get into a decently paid job afterwards. Maybe if you're at Oxbridge or Edinburgh or a couple of other universities you can use your English lit degree. However, even somewhere like York or Southampton (i.e. Russell group not ex-poly) an English lit degree will not get you very far. The same applies to mod languages degrees generally. If get emails everyday at work from people offering translation / interpretation services. 20 years ago I worked in that area but there's not the same work now - continentals working in a professional environment speak/write English pretty well and google translate is "good enough" for a lot of stuff. Yes, if your family are very wealthy then you can study what you like, but the smart families know that an English lit degree, especially when done by someone without a firm grasp of English grammar, is nigh on useless careerwise and steer their children (usually their daughters) accordingly.
(2) If you want to be successful in your career move to a big / rich city. I know so many people who did their degree and moved back to Huddersfield / Wrexham / Middlesborough. Yes, it's cheap compared to London but you will never find the job opportunities there. Once you have being doing minimum wage work for a year or two (shop assistant, care assistant, etc.) most employers will write you off. Just being in somewhere where people have higher incomes means that you can benefit from trickle down cash. Migrants are clued in to this - they go to London where they can get work cleaning, nannying, temping, etc. Yes, you maybe have to houseshare, even roomshare, in some shithole for a few years, but you get valuable experience and contacts and, if you are good, you can move up.
(3) If you want to be successful in your career build a network of ambitious / rich / well-connected people. People want to believe that this isn't true, but it really really is. Getting this network (for themselves or their children) is a reason that people sent their children to independent schools, although very good state schools will attract the same types. It's also a reason why someone from a state school should, all things being equal, go to the university with a higher % of entrants from independent schools. If your social network consists of people from your hometown in non-graduate jobs then you're not going to get much out of it.
(4) Formal education is largely useless unless specialist (medicine, professional legal training, engineering, etc.) or combined with good soft skills. Soft skills really matter. People employ you to make money - if you can bring in business and get it done efficiently then you will always be able to get a job, whether that is in an estate agency, a restaurant or PR company.
(5) Mid-paid jobs are vanishing, especially for women. By mid-paid I mean jobs that pay roughly £18k to £30k, although exact parameters vary depending on where in Britain it is, e.g. job in Wrexham paying £30k is pretty good; job in central London paying £30k not so good. There is a lot of confusion around statistics on annual incomes but someone full time on national living wage gets £15k before tax or £13,350 after tax. Computers have eliminated huge numbers of secretarial jobs and even PA jobs are going now also and salaries have also been pushed down. To be brutal about it, the equal pay for equal work stuff has damaged women's employability. The claims that cleaners were doing the same work as binmen were ridiculous and the effect over the long term was to drag down wages for both men and women or eliminate the jobs completely. I love how those who say how great the film/musical Made in Dagenham is for illustrating women's struggle for equal pay ignore the fact that Ford now make feck all cars in Dagenham and that, as regards other UK car manufacturers, the work done by the women who were at Dagenham is now done abroad.