To think university is overrated?

[WeAreGypsy]

I did a degree at a normal university, in my early 20s, and although it had its merits I think it was overall an overrated experience.

For this reason I find it hard to recommend to my own children to follow that path. Except for the sciences and vocational courses like law, medicine etc. Or if you have a have a total passion for your subject (I didn't, I just wandered into mine).

The fact that you could leave university at age 21+ with over £40K debts is also a killer for me.

Yet everyone talks about going to university, schools encourage it, and its almost seen as a rite of passage.

Am interested in others' thoughts on this and what you hope for your children.

I would have always thought I was very pro/uni. However nowadays so many people have degrees that they don't get to use for their jobs and debt student debt etc.
I would be of the opinion that people should choose the appropriate course/ or other training required for the job they want. Not just randomly choosing a degree subject because they can get into it for example.

My DH has a degree that he could never find work in. Whereas mine always had one specific job at the end.
He loved uni and said he wouldn't change it but often wishes he'd gone into a trade instead with a more focused end.
I hated uni but it was only way to get to my end goal and I love my job.

There's no right answer, or solution but I don't think that everyone needs to go to university. It's certainly not a guarantee of a job or being successful. Nor is not going to uni a sign of less intelligence/success.

Or if you have a have a total passion for your subject (I didn't, I just wandered into mine)

And there you have it: you probably shouldn't have gone to university - you did it because you couldn't think of anything better to do. Other people (including your children) will be different.

This means that you weren't ready, not that universities are overrated.

YABU.

Yes. I went to a rubbish uni in the mid 90s and got a not particularly good degree (good result, but meh subject) because it was really important to my family to see their child going to uni.

It cost me a fortune in fees and poor mental health. I have never used it in my work. I try never to regret anything but if I had my time again I would go down the vocational route.

I had an absolute ball and I'm convinced that it expanded the way that I think about the world. I also developed a network that has been pivotal to much of my career - this was unwitting, it didn't even cross my mind to use the experience for 'contacts'.

I tried to explain this to somebody who are wanted to break into my field, without doing a degree. Quite aside from the knowledge that you gain, there are networks and university gives you access to them. And it's not that the industry is shunning you for not being 'part of the club'. It is quite arrogant to try to enter an industry without putting in the groundwork that the rest of us have undertaken. Sorry, sound quite huffy but without outing myself, can't really explain much more than that!

The problem is that, through job upskilling, people almost need to go to university to get a job that pays above minimum wage, that isn't a trade job.

My old boss would have graduated in the mid 90s, had he gone to uni. He didn't, but walked into an admin job at 18. He now owns his own recruitment company. Despite that, he won't hire anyone who isn't a graduate because that's what the market dictates. He freely admits that if he was my age or younger, he would had definitely gone to university as there is such a limited job market nowadays to non graduates.

My cousin is mid 20s, went to uni and hated it. He's now working as a medical secretary and loves it - but without his degree, he wouldn't have even got an interview.

I'll just add though that I think that it really depends on what you want out of life and which career path you are going down. Not everybody needs to do it.

There is often a "polish" and confidence to people who have spent three years doing a good course at a good university. It provides an opportunity to get involved in student clubs and politics as well as providing the intellectual indulgence of three years thinking about issues and learning how to formulate arguments. I think that the right university can greatly increase somebody's intellectual confidence and develop their understanding of the world.

But it is not an absolute rule. There are lots of people who don't go to university who have interesting, clever and passionately held views. There are others who went to universities that were not particularly good and barely had any individual contact time with lecturers or tutors. Perhaps the most frustrating people, to me, are those who went to one of the best universities in the world but barely took advantage of that at all and emerged with a mid-range degree and little obvious interest in the wider world.

I would still encourage my children to go to university (unless they want to go to drama school / art college etc). I think that the confidence it can imbue is very helpful and that it is an important stepping stone between childhood and adult independence. However, I do wonder if there are more worthwhile things that they could do for three years than attending one of the lower ranked universities / courses. Volunteer work in particular comes to mind.

You have to consider that a child born today will probably live until 100 and that the world they enter is a very different one to our generation. Also, a lot of jobs (white collar jobs) are going to disappear over the next few years in the wake of the next generation of AI. They need to think about their education in that context.

I want my DC to be the best educated they can be - if this means me supporting them through university and on to masters and PHDs so be it.
I have no problem with me working a few more years to achieve this without them graduating with a mountain of debt.

I try to encourage them to think about both what they love doing, where they would fit in and what will be valued in tomorrows economy. I have one interested in engineering / robotics and one thinking Oxbridge (history / law).

Its a lot different to the world I went to university in, and we need to think about it differently.

I have several degrees (good, difficult ones from RG establishments) and while I don't currently use them professionally, I do use the skills they taught me, especially critical thinking, evaluating evidence sources and the like.

Sorry to raise the dreaded 'B' word again, but I really feel the general lack of these skills caused the whole Brexit debacle. IMO, people were ill-equipped to really read around a complex subject and come to their own, informed view - everyone wanted to be spoon fed the answer and this is something that troubles me.

I like to think that the reason younger people were more likely to vote Remain is due to the fact that they were more likely to have studied at a higher academic level and to have developed these skills.

Whilst apprenticeships have a valuable place in society, we need to be very careful that we nurture the skill of academic analysis, society really does need that skill set.

Its a lot different to the world I went to university in, and we need to think about it differently.

I strongly agree with this. I wonder if we will see more young people developing computing skills at an earlier age and opting to do different types of courses or even just opting out of university altogether. I think that AI is a game changer and that we need to change how we educate young people so that we can be at the forefront of advances in technology.

It also perhaps changes the way people will need to think over the next century or so. There will still be a place for the sort of logical, analytical skills developed in law and maths or science based degrees, but I wonder if those skills will need to be applied very differently because computers will be able to do a lot of the basic analysis more efficiently. We may also see skills and jobs being valued very differently in the future, so that the lucrative options now are overtaken by other careers.

andintothefire It's fascinating isn't it? I wanted to learn a language recently so I started playing with DuoLingo. I wanted to learn how to code so I started a free course on CodeAcademy. I wanted to tile my kitchen a few weeks ago so I watched some videos on YouTube.

There are pros and cons to all of the above but overwhemingly, I think it's incredible that we now have so much information at our fingertips (cliche, but true).

But of course, we'll undoubtedly see the decline of certain degrees, like language degrees and maths degrees (for the reasons you outline). I'd love to know what will be deemed university-worthy 100 years from now.

I'm a cynic about it. I'm very anti debt. I've never had a loan for anything. I'm a bit old fashioned but I save up before I buy. I cannot get head around the level of debt people leave uni with.

Dd1 (about yo go inyo yr13) wants to go. I can't stop her. She is passionate about her subject so I won't talk her out of it but I feel sick at the cost.
I don't think many degrees hold the value they once did. Every man and his dog seems to go to uni thsee days. There is nothing special or exclusive about it unless it's medicine or law. I think as a nation we have all been sold a bit if a con that's nothing more than a very clever way to fiddle unemployment figures.

Sadly, so many people leave uni with lots of debt and go into a run of the mill job that they didn't need a degree for. I know they don't pay it off until earning over x amount but it's a debt attached to them for x years.

I used to work in a bank. I joined at 16. I have a better pension pot than those that joined me on 800 pound a year more at age 21 with their degree's. We did the same job and mist school leavers like me got promoted quicker than those on the graduate entrance due to our workplace experience so their increased start pay was soon wiped out by comparison. It may have changed now - this was back in the day when uni was free.

FoggyBottom harsh judgement there seeing as you don't know my full experience or life. I was using myself as a bit of an example, true. But lots of people took a similar route and really got alot out of it. Its true that there was less clarity, but in a way I am hoping that this thread gives myself and others more for the future. Why don't you give your own example rather than bashing others?

But all the other posts I'm finding really interesting.

It really annoys me when parents discourage offspring due to the debt. If you earn a lot via having the degree you pay back a lot. If you never become a higher earner you pay back a little. Most people will have the majority of it written off. The loan does not go on your credit file.

I think most people under the age of 30 now would struggle to get into a "professional" job without a degree because of the inflation of job requirements. It used to be possible to get an entry level role and work up but with a few exceptions this is now incredibly hard to do, so getting a degree (aside from all the other benefits) is merely a way of getting over the first hurdle.

Well, it completely depends what someone is going to do, where their talents lie and what their priorities are.

I would tentatively agree that some degrees might not be worth it for some people, in financial terms. But a good degree from a Russell Group uni is going to increase your earning potential by more than £40k over a lifetime. Also student loan debt is not the same as regular debt.

Personally, I also think that the discipline of study and thinking deeply about a subject is valuable in itself. I also found that the "social" side of things is not to be trivialised. My life was transformed by meeting lots of very intelligent, driven, ambitious people in my Oxbridge college. It raises your game, makes you consider things for yourself that you might not think possible otherwise.

Depends what you want to do, really, doesn't it. I work in media/tech, and you don't see many people without degrees+masters+a whole load of other specialist quals working in this sector.

WeAreGypsy - I knew from the age of about 12 that I wanted to go to university, what I wanted to study & why. I went when only around 15-20% of the population went. I am about the third generation of my family to go to an elite university - but I never ever took that good fortune & privilege for granted. I knew what a privilege it was, I worked bloody hard and took everything that I could from the experience - as others say - it widens one's horizons & opens up one's mind.

It used to drive me crazy as an undergrad, and now as a professor, that a lot of people go to university because it's what's "expected" or because they can't think of anything better to do.

I dislike that attitude and - rightly - am critical of it because I have taught a lot of young people, and adult mature students, for whom university is a life-changing experience. The first lad to go to university from a depressed & poor Welsh mining village, the older woman escaped from a bad marriage - I've taught people who had thought that "University wasn'ty for the likes of me" and they have flourished and made something of themselves. I'd far rather teach these students (who often struggle & need a lot more of my time & emotional energy) than middle-class people like me who don't appreciate the privilege and value of a university education.

So if you feel harshly criticised, you might reflect on why that is - from the perspective of my experience of teaching those for whom university was life-changing.

Also, I agree with what MyLlamas has said - I do view the increasing cost of tuition fees in a world where degrees are devalued as a form of tax on the young.

It feels like young people cannot win - either they don't go to uni and are effectively prevented from getting certain (usually higher paid) jobs, or they go to uni and come out with exceedingly high levels of debt that they will be stuck paying for years. It's hardly an ideal choice.

I can relate to your opinion, OP. I had a similar experience with undergrad -- sort of wandered into a degree course rather than picking something I was passionate about, racked up the debt, and while I do hold a position in my field, my field is definitely over-saturated so unless you're at the top of your game (and I am not) jobs are few and far between.

However, I wouldn't want to try making a go of it without uni. Even if the degree's only purpose is to wedge open doors a crack, those doors wouldn't be open otherwise, so I can't in good conscience encourage DC to not go, even though I didn't see a huge return on it. The standard of the average employee has been well and truly raised over the last 20 years and whether or not I agree with it, I don't want to see the DC left behind.

As the first one in my family to go to uni, I didn't have a lot of guidance on how to shape a career out of a university education. Both DH and I have degrees so I'm hoping our experience will be able to help our DC when it comes to their future.

Llamas has a point, even if you don't agree with it PN. Lots of people do feel sick at the thought of large debts, especially if their future is unsure, and they may also feel they have a responsibility to pay it off. I can see lots of positives of studying for degrees from these posts, but it doesn't mean people don't have completely valid concerns.

Also - and I am only wondering this aloud because only a couple of people have alluded to it - going away from home at 18 might be a quite difficult experience for a few teenagers. Julie Burchill believed it was an contributing issue for her son's deteriorating mental health as he could not cope with all the change and freedom of his new environment. Its just a thought.

There are more and more apprentices coming into my field - and I think it's going to happen more and more often, they end up professionaly qualified but earn on the way instead of coming out of uni with a ton of debt like I did.

As more and more big companies push CSR this will happen more.

Like I said Foggybottom you don't know anything about me or what led me to go to university or what happened to me whilst I was there or what I did after that. I certainly never saw it as an entitlement in the way you say so you are directing your anger to the wrong person. But angrily judge away ....

CSR : I will have to google that.