to feel like we were scammed into going to University?

[Schleep]

When I was at school (completed sixth form 2009), if you were academic it was assumed that you'd go to University. The whole thing was pushed incredibly hard on us and, in retrospect, was quite propaganda-like - we had external people come and do loads of assemblies on how amazing Uni Life was, lots and lots of talk about how University would guarantee us high paying jobs and we were repeatedly told to not worry about the debt, the interest rate is practically zero and we'd never even realise the money was coming out.
(Of course, when you're in your teens, debt looks like free money anyway)

Fast forward 10, 15 years later - and all my friends are saddled with huge debts that they'll likely be paying off for the rest of their lives.
A lot of them have had their repayment contracts changed so its no longer written off after a certain time, the payment terms are not as favourable and interest rates have gone up.

I dodged a bullet by being rebellious and dropping out after just 1 term, and that term was just before the fees tripled (at the time, you'd have thought I was ruining my life the way the University/everyone responded.) and I feel incredibly lucky. A degree would not have increased my employability and I have no student debt.
But I have friends and family genuinely upset at the hundreds they're forking out each month for something they didn't want and (at least in their cases) they simply do not use.

I find it baffling that the system was funnelling people out of the workforce, into unnecessary (in many cases) education and saddling people with huge amounts of debt.

I finished sixth form in 2010. When I informed college tutors that I didn’t want to go to uni I was told to start practising asking ‘would you like fries with that’ 🙄
I have a decent job, a good work life balance and no student debt

@Giraffe317 What you don’t know is how much more you could have earned with a degree. You are where you are on a decent salary, but how do you know your line of work would have been identical. My DD is exactly the same age as you. Her earnings are way above decent. It all depends what you settle for and what your ambition is.

I don't think you can compare deciding to get married at (say) 25 with no external pressure to do so against being funneled by people you most trust (teachers, parents etc) into applying to university at age 17.

Lots of schools make it seem like it's the only logical route to take, my school certainly didn't even mention apprenticeships, because they are more interested in showcasing how many students ended up at RG universities than considering what's best for the student. The kids at my school who voiced concerns about going to uni were quickly shut down by their teachers, tutors and career adviser.

I don't think it's fair to point the finger at someone for a decision they made at 17 that was predicated on trust in the wisdom of authority figures around them.

I don't think people were scammed as such - those that went over say 10 years ago, situations change and far more entry levels have opened up in 'some' careers that don't involve Uni- more than 10 or 12 years ago there were way less options and many careers were using 'a degree' as the initial sifting level. Things change and we can't always predict that - although I can appreciate it's bloody frustrating having a load of debt and a job paying no more than you could get into 'now' with 5 GCSEs and a BTEC and a couple of years on the job experience - which will have cost nowt ! Many careers though do still have a degree as a requirement to even be allowed to practice- Not so sure I would bother if I wasn't aiming towards that kind of job though without looking at other routes first-

It's the same when people buy a house at peak prices and then 5 years later it can be worth £30k less than what they paid because the area has dropped down or a load of new houses have been built etc - it wasn't a scam , it was the price of entry for that house 'at that point' -

That's the best way to look upon it . A great experience.

@Crikeyalmighty I think the major mistake was the Cameron/Clegg government lifting the cap on student numbers and raising the cost. Not only did this widen participation but it spawned a myriad of dubious degrees. It played very much into the idea that dc should have a chance to go but failed to recognise the consequences of too many grads with degrees neither they, or anyone else can use. Having a great time does now come at a huge price. Starting in 2010 like the op, it wasn’t expensive. Fees were 1/3 of now. Most grads did get grad level work if they sought it. Now it’s a loan for 40 years before it’s written off and work will matter. So although having a great time is wonderful it should perhaps be seen as a bonus.

I work in a similar field, we have to produce evidence of degree at a minimum for anyone in a professional role when we are audited by our external regulators.

Degree cannot be replaced by experience, we have sponsored study for many who haven’t achieved a degree but it’s still essential and can take a lot longer part time to achieve.

I agree. There's been too much time where the rhetoric has been that if you don't go to university you're failing at life in some way. I'm saying that as someone who works in academia and I use my degree every day to do my job.
Back in the early 90s when I went, it was just as student loans were coming in and grants being phased out. The interest on a student loan back then was less than what you got in a high interest savings account. I took the loan, stuck it in said account and immediately paid it off when I finished my course, having earned some nice interest along the way. Between my grant and working during each holiday, I had enough to live on. Totally different era!
The way youngsters end up with huge debt these days is wild. We made sure we could fund our kids through, or they'd have been living at home and commuting.
But honestly they need to stop pushing uni as the be all and end all for school leavers.

@TizerorFizz totally agree- all that having a great time comes at a significant cost for most of your working like time - young people need to think with both heart and head and in my opinion unless going to be a doctor/kawyer etc need to think - is there another way to get into this profession I'm interested in -- it's helluva expense for a few years of 'fun/ independence without any fiscal benefit for many I'm sad to say -

I went to Uni in 1970. There were no tuition fees and the LA grant for living expenses was means tested on your parent's income - so if you weren't daft with your money you ended up with a degree and no debt.
BUT - only 3% of school leavers went to Uni back then, so funding them wasn't such a burden on the state. Also graduates being in much shorter supply meant having a degree did guarantee a job.

Totally agree. There was not enough true information and education given on the lifelong cost of going to university. It was always presented as such a soft loan.

I say all the time that I feel scammed by the whole process. It's a huge financial decision to make at 18, but it was never presented as such.

I completely agree. I never went to uni and started working straight away instead (from a poor family). It was drummed into us all that you must get A levels and go to university but all my friends that went to uni ended up in the same working world I started out in. None of them ended up in jobs even vaguely related to the subjects they studied and degrees don't mean squat. Employers want experience.

I’m a recruitment manager and we have graduate days. It’s really sad to see so many young people with good degrees who were lead to believe that they would be pretty much be guaranteed a bright future and yet are working in Sainsbury’s or Starbucks, unable to get work in their chosen field.

And I will be honest and say there really is no difference between a good apprentice who left education after A levels as compared to most of the graduates.
Some of the best young people I’ve employed have been 18 with 2 A levels and no student debt and have gone on to climb the career ladder really quickly.

I agree that university was pushed when I graduated if you were at all academic. I was not in the UK, but it was similar in that at that time it could still be a reasonable financial decision, the cost wasn't terrible and it could help your employability. 9It didn't seem to occur to anyone that even someone who is academically able might prefer some other kind of job.)

Costs have now skyrocketed and the perceived value is declining - because so many people are graduating with shit degrees. I think in many cases people are starting to associate university grads with ridged thinking and poor work habits.

Mt eldest son did a year at university, realized it isn't for him, and is now in a job in a law firm as a clerk, where they will train him on the job for several years - interestingly they told him they prefer to train their own people, they don't like the graduates from various paraprofessional programs.

My middle son is looking at tech program, that he may transfer into university if it suits him after the two years are finished - he will be able to transfer some credits.

The youngest is a way from making university decisions but I don't have any intention of encouraging university just because.

What makes me sad is that I did love university myself, learning how to read a text deeply, history and science, all kinds of ideas that I had had never heard of before. But to a large extent that seems to be missing now - the work is so watered down and the professors in many cases aren't half as good as they were, or even half as well read.

I went to school in the early nineties and uni was definitely more for academics . A degree (in anything) guaranteed a job. The push from late nineties onwards has made degrees ten a penny.
When my kids were growing up I impressed on them uni was available to them (because it wasn't for me and I never wanted them to feel they way.) I did a degree in my mid thirties which cost 5k in total (2k loans rest savings)
When my kids were discussing higher education and it was now 6k a year plus maintenance loan. I was more cautious as potentially 35 k of debt was on the cards. I was more of the thought process if it will benefit your career. But both dds wanted the uni experience. Both went and had a great time , lived in different parts of the country, got some independence. However they are now both in jobs they could have got without a degree so I do question was it worth it.

Sorry, but what does "Doris Lessing left school at 13" add to the conversation on the thread?

She was precociously intelligent, lived at a time when degrees didn't matter, and for women a degree was not at all necessary. That time in the far distant past has long since gone.

My point was that someone like Doris Lessing is a complete red herring (sorry, bad pun). 99.9999999% of people who leave school at 13 do not go on to win the Nobel Prize in literature.

Yes, you're right in many ways. I have studied and worked in universities since the 1992 transition. What could have happened was a serious re-evaluation of Higher Ed, providing all kinds of pathways and opportunities, ridding the sector of the snobbery it's always been beset by.

Instead, old universities clung to their model, shrieked in horror at the idea of 'polytechnics' being able to get to the research money trough or award their own degrees and invented the meaningless 'Russell Group' brand to distinguish themselves as the high end of the market. Meanwhile the greedy Polytech V-Cs turned their institutions into imitations of old universities without the funding.

Later on, fees came in and the student-farming began. The whole model depends on each new under- and post-grad intake being lined up so no-one can stop to draw breath. Old universities dance for money by importing far more overseas fee-payers than their infrastructure can stand and 'new' universities cut courses to the bone, losing degrees that cost too much in staff and equipment and / or which can't cater to mass recruitment.

At the heart of it is an essential misrepresentation of what degree courses are for. Some vocational courses such as medicine, mechanical engineering, pharmacy, acting or law are designed to train you for a profession. These are resource-intensive and hard to get into. Many, many degree courses though are mixtures of humanities subjects which were originally designed just to be interesting to study, to teach students how to study and bring up your general level of education. They aren't useful for getting specific work and aren't exclusive enough any more to be prestigious. They are cheap to run and staff-to-student ratios can be low.

They are sold, however as being necessary qualifications for jobs when they aren't really qualifying you for anything specific. This would matter less if employers had not abandoned much of their previous role in training young people with general degrees for jobs and young people weren't getting themselves into huge university debt. HE institutions now make a lot of revenue from student housing and the economies of towns / cities have pivoted to the 'student market', often to the detriment of other residents.

Because of the money involved, I can't see how the cycle will be stopped easily. Straight from school is not a good point to commit to several nore fixed years of education, and being able to take courses at different points in a working life should be possible. HE should be different, but it'll take a shift in the way employers recruit and more refuseniks to disrupt the vested interests and sheer inertia of the current system.

It may be that the cycle stops because it is not longer economically advantageous to take on that debt.

Yes, I'm sort of surprised there isn't more debt resistence already. It's not sustainable and I wish I trusted TPTB to move to a model which both educated and trained people, let people learn ideas as well as ways of making a living, prioritising UK students and giving people chances to study at different points. Having been in the system, I know all the forces ranged against this.

The UK economy is not producing ‘graduate’ jobs at the same rate as other countries eg America. Since the graduate premium is reducing there is an oversupply of grads. Add into that the extreme expense of Uni, it’s needed to be critical about the ‘value’ of Higher Ed in purely economic terms. Yet degrees are conversely needed as an entry level for some jobs. There are other forms of value in going to uni, but it’s much harder to argue for those when debt is £50k vs £15k.

@DuncanMcleod There had been an uptick of young people going to university by 1970. As many new universities had been built such as Essex and Sussex, the percentage was nearer 8%. However it’s nearer 38% now.

What most of this is pointing towards is that we have probably around 20% who would be better off working with study or doing a vocational HND model of course. Employers ask for degrees because they are looking for “better” candidates and believe a degree proves this. If we still had the old polys, there would be a supply of HND/C students who were very employable. They could go on to a degree if appropriate.

One big question we never ask, because we get obsessed with the cost to DC’s, is who backs the loans. Yes, it’s us. The mounting cost to the government of unpaid loans is in excess of £250 billion. So not only do potential students need to think carefully, so, as a nation, do we. Mergers of unis and reversion to colleges of HE for some would be a start.

@NorthernBogbean indeed- it has literally become an industry - we live in Bath and you see it here- in one way it's detrimental to such stuff as social housing ( far too much land given over to new student mini luxury flats) on the other hand it keeps the town vibrant, lots of overseas students and also a source of lots of interesting part time jobs for lots of mumsnet type mums if I'm honest- rather than retail etc - I'm not sure what the solution is at all as it's got this far

I completely agree with you, especially in the US, and more and more over here. The career I ended up going into (v high potential max income) didn't end up requiring a degree at all. It's just a cash grab in many cases. People are going into debt for no real reason - most need a specialised further degree to learn anything specific.

Don't get me started on the textbook scam - being required to spend hundreds on the 'latest edition' of unreasonably priced books.