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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To expect DD to go to university?

256 replies

WashwithCare · 19/01/2010 20:50

Chatting away on an unrelated issue, I uttered the immortal words "when DD goes to universtiy"... another mother immediately jumped in. She chided that I couldn't just "assume" DD would either want or be able to go to university..

DD is 3 and has just started pre-school. However, I definitely do ASSUME she will go to University, and not just any University, but a "good" one to boot. Preferably to do a 'proper' subject.

AIBU?

OP posts:
TiggyR · 24/01/2010 09:42

Why? Most people who choose a course in nursing do so because they have a long-held ambition to nurse. Most people who do a degree in let's say, history, do so because they don't really know what they want to be, but they like history. Or they jsut want to be seen to be taking a 'serious' subject. But they might end up being a chartered accountant. Or a nurse. As you said yourself, a degree in economics didn't force you to be labelled as an economist for the rest of your life. The whole point of a vocational course is that it caters for people who have a vocation! If you have one then there is no need to do a purely academic degree while you wait for the career-muse to descend.

cory · 24/01/2010 11:13

All I can say LeQueen is that my parents expected their children to inherit their bookish genes and their love of academic learning: they had to make to with a 50% success rate. It's that pesky career muse.

As for me, I decided at the age of 14 that I wanted to be a mediaevalist and have never wavered from that idea, so the "bookish" subjects I read (Latin, history, archaeology) were by way of being vocational.

violethill · 24/01/2010 11:30

Oh for goodness sake! Just encourage your children in their chosen path. They will have inherited genes from each parent, but there are a multitude of other factors which will determine who they are! I'm sure many of us with more than one child will have realised that actually, despite the same gene pool and upbringing, they have different personalities, different strengths, different interests. Thank god - I would hate to have a family where all my kids were clones!

FWIW, DH and I both have similar strengths and educational backgrounds - I did English Lit at Bristol, he did Eng Lit at London, we both did postgrad studies, I worked in law, both now work in an educational sphere... but this doesn't mean to say our children are going to follow in our footsteps, in fact one of them is clearly moving in a Science/Maths direction.

If you have particular ambitions for your child to go to a particular type of University/do a particular degree/have a particular career, I suggest you go and do it youself, rather than living your life second hand through them!

I loved University, but as I said in a previous post, it's not the same as it was these days - no more grants as I had, it means racking up masses of debt. Also when I went, it was a way of moving away from home, having those life experiences that you didn't get living under your parents' roof, becoming independent. Not like that now - life has changed, young people don't need to move 100 miles away to have the freedom that we did. They also often can't afford to move away anyway. University has become a different beast. Fine if it suits you, but not the passport to what it used to be.

LollipopViolet · 24/01/2010 12:08

YABU.

I always knew I'd go to uni, and I'm very happy with the one I'm at. But I will NEVER forget a so called friend saying "Ewww but it's not a red-brick uni" when I told him where I planned to study. I also study Media Production so make of that what you will but it IS a "proper" course, a proper subject and has helped with many of my skills over the past year and a half.

It's her life. If she wants to go to a university you deem unfit, and do a course you don't deem proper, then that's her choice.

Bit daft to make the decision for her at 3 though.

posieparker · 25/01/2010 16:52

I couldn't give a crap what your expectations are of your child.

Sassybeast · 25/01/2010 17:09

But you'd still love her if she ended up - I dunno - waxing bikini lines for a living , par example (can you tell I'm a French linguist ) As long as she had qualifications from a red hot university ?

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