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

[Thegrassroots26]

To think that in the past university, as well as sometimes being good for qualifying and future career, was a way for parents to get their kids to leave the family home at 18/19? Today, with less going and the financial societal and employment pressures, the landscape has changed for parents and their young adult kids immeasurably.

Oh 100%! I wanted to go to uni (specific course etc) which helped, but my siblings didn’t - however it was never an option not to go from my parents. My mum joyfully redecorated each room as we left into rooms for her, craft rooms etc 😂 I think she was thrilled!

Whilst I can see where you’re coming from I don’t think it’s necessary the case, though it may have been for some parents.
I think leaving home to go to uni definitely enables them to become more independent and forge their own way in the world. Both my sons left home at 18 to go to uni, no pressure from us and entirely their choice.

I was desperate to leave home, uni was an acceptable way.

Given young people live at home longer than ever and university uptake is higher than ever your argument doesn’t have any basis.

I do think it’s a really valuable transition stage. Dh, for example, doesn’t need a university degree to do what he does now (he started his own business). He certainly could have done it without a degree. But living independently is important. There is little reason or capacity for young people to leave home except to go to uni at 18/19. The one person close to me who didn’t go to uni still, in her mid 30s, lives at home, in a glorified shed in her parents garden.

Well, I didn’t grow up in a university-going context (left school in 1990, having stayed at school longer than anyone else in my family, and I think only two other people from my rough school were going to university), but I think it was more that the assumption was that you left home as soon as you could, for whatever reason, and that when you’d left, you’d left. Our house was tiny and overcrowded, and two of my sisters moved into my room as soon as I left for my first term, my remaining belongings were stored in the attic, and I was on the sofa when I came home at Christmas or for other visits. Boomeranging home even as a very young adult just wasn’t a possibility.

I went to a london university and while I was from abroad, all the london based students lived at home including my DH. You couldn't even get guaranteed student accommodation if living within the M25.

Not sure really, as I had friends who left home at 16 when they started work. And I knew some parents who expected rent to be paid from 16 so made it difficult for them to stay in education. But apparently I went to uni before the big push from the government and only about 20% of students went at the time (90's) so I was in the minority not the norm.

It did help me build independence though.

Or alternatively, a way for young adults to get away from their parents and the whole shitty area they’d found themselves in. That’s what I used it for primarily and I know of many others who did the same.
Also had siblings who rejoiced at the expansion of space my going created!

OP, its still a way to get your offspring to leave home. I'm relying on it happening for my own sanity otherwise I'm going to have to be the one to leave home !!!

Possibly. But a large proportion of the students on the course with me in the 1970s lived at home with their parents to save money because their parents earned too much for them to qualify for a grant.

(And these weren't fabulously wealthy people either - I didn't qualify for a full grant in my final year at Uni, because my dustman dad's wage was too high.)

And it’s still a struggle now to imagine how young people who don’t go to uni are going to fly the nest! Honestly how are they going to be able to whilst in MW jobs?

How far into “the past” are we talking? Until a couple of decades ago only a small percentage of young people went to university and they were predominantly those who were academic and accessing higher education as the first step in building a career. There were fewer universities, a narrower range of degrees, and much less focus placed on “the experience.”

Where did you stay when you came home for breaks? My DS was home for a full month at Christmas, I think Easter too and summer was some time in June untill the beginning of October! Dd is going this year and I think we’ll need to just leave her room as it is.

Man I hear you.

my mum redecorated my room when I went to uni and made it into her sewing room.

i didn’t want to do that to mine but I still have one at home at 25 and I would very much like her to move out!

I’m not the poster you’re addressing, but I was on the sofa if I came home for a visit.

I went in the mid - 80s. Girls grammar school, so many of my friends went as well.
Most of us moved back home when we finished our degrees - may be because we were London based and even in those days, the best jobs were there and accommodation was expensive.
My DS finished his degree in 2024, he's back living with us (again the London problem) and many of his friends are also back home. It's not easy - I'm sure I was far more considerate of my parents when I moved back home!

It is - but I see that as a positive. It's an opportunity for young people to leave home and broaden their horizons in a relatively safe and controlled way. It would be far more economical for me to have my children living at home and working than to be supporting them at University but I don't think that would be good for them. And even in the 80s when I went to University, there may not have been no fees to pay but grants were means tested and relatively few got a full grant. It was a financial strain for my parents for sure. They encouraged me to go but it wasn't because they were getting anything out of me leaving, far from it - my sister who stayed at home until she got married paid them rent, I cost them money into my 20s.

@OriginalUsername2 we ended up not coming home much for breaks! My mum is still very confused about why there’s some unresolved issues from my siblings related to this 😂. Luckily due to age gaps by the time my youngest sibling needed a spare room I’d bought a house so they stayed with me. I used to pay extra to stay in uni accommodation over summer, but after the first year I just stayed in my student rental.

Definitely would have preferred the option to go home!

I went to uni in 2008 and yes, definitely an era where it was a right of passage and a way of leaving home which felt safe and supported. Student accommodation usually includes bills and in my day tuition was 3k a year. Schools and colleges pushed university as the route to success.

I have a few friends who did degrees that haven't had any impact on their employability at all and they are in below average wage jobs. One friend probably won't ever hit an income threshold of paying their loan back.

I won't be encouraging my children to go to university unless they have a clear career pathway.

I graduated in 1996 and for myself and many of my peers, there was definitely the expectation that we wouldn’t be moving back home. Or if we did, it was for a short period of time. In fact, none of us wanted to.

I moved back in with my parents for 3 weeks as I was waiting for the contract in my new shared house to start. It was a very tough few weeks.

Times are completely different now. My ds is Year 13 and I fully expect that he will return home post uni, if needed. Or we will help him with rent if he decides to move away (as we are not city based). It’s much, much harder to establish yourself now post graduation.

Ha! Last spring we had magpie/crow wars in trees at the end of our garden. The magpies persevered & rebuilt a nest twice, after the crows wrecked it. An uneasy truce was called.
We saw the fledglings in shrubery still being fed by the parents - but when they disappeared we wondered where to. Google told us the parents chase them out to "large groups of other non breeding youngsters"
"Ahh - just like magpie university then" DD said😁.

Ahh! I don’t think my DS had the option of staying in his rental, they seem to rent out from September to June and then get summer renters in or something. I guess it depends on the place.

My son was working doing an apprenticeship in tech and in a lovely house share 10 miles from us 3 weeks before he was18 - had been working from 16 -, no uni involved - his choice and worked well

I know for my mums generation (reaching 18 at start of 70s), young women from nice middle class families needed an acceptable reason to live away from their parents home before marriage. Girls going into “digs” with a friend but still close to parents home were considered to be of questionable morals. University or other higher education, or a job further away from home were acceptable reasons.

Also for those saying the smaller percentage who went to university- remember those figures are just for university degree courses, if you became a primary school teacher in the late 60s/early 70s, you didn’t get a degree in education, there were two routes, one a degree in a subject of your choice then do a teacher training qualification for a year (similar to now) or you went to teacher training college. Most primary school teachers went via this route so while they went away and did a 3 year course at a higher education college, it didn’t count as going to university.

Similarly, nursing wasn’t a degree then, so going to nursing college wasn’t counted in the figures of those going to university. The grants system was the same. Just when it gets repeated that only 15-20% of boomers went to university, factor in those who got higher education we’d now call a degree.