By 2010aQuintessentialOdysse... Tue 19-Jan-10 22:26:15
She said she was a tutor. In my uni, third year students were tutoring first year students, they were effectively tutors. Not to be confused with a lecturer, or a professor, or a doctor.
Well in that sense of the word I've tutored at a Russell Group university and at the the Sorbonne.
Anyway:
You can assume all your like that your DD will go to university. In fact you sound very like my parents who have 7 degrees between them and rather assumed that all their offspring would go down the multiple degree route. Their 3 children have one degee between them and that's because I was stood over and forced to fill in my UCAS form, deferred a year, eventually went because my parents practically packed for me and drove me there, got a 2.i (from a Russell Group university....) and then went and trained and worked as a nanny then maternity nurse and then EFL teacher. Then I got married to someone in the military and moved halfway across the world shooting my career prospects down just when I'd decided I might go back to uni and then get a proper job. I wasn't that interested in uni at 18. Or 19. Or by the time it got to my final year which is why I only got a 2.i much to the frustration of my supervisors. Now I'm going to do a degree in a subject which is practical and that I'm interested in. Hurrah for the OU. My DSis did A-levels and went to work for Nationwide and is now worming her way up the ranks of the Civil Service rather quickly. My brother quit school after GCSEs, trained to do something with computers and is now 17 and earning £20k.
Uni is not the be all and end all. It's about a lot more than a degree. In fact my degree is the least valuable thing I got from uni because it's now so undervalued EVERYONE has one. Unless you're a nanny in which case there's a distinct advantage to be had still. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I have it but it really has no practical use and I wish I'd waited a few years to really work out what I wanted from life before doing it. As it was I made the wrong choice with my undergrad which means I need to play catch-up to do a postgrad in an area which interests me and I actually want to work in.
If your DD wants to go and do physiotherapy or nursing is that a proper subject? Because my top 10 in the country school didn't think nursing was a proper profession for all the degrees it requires. Nor was primary teaching. According to them I was going to do law. Or medicine. Or a proper subject which would lead to a job at Deloittes. Don't make the mistakes that parents inspired by the 80s did and remember that your DDs happiness is far more important than anything ele. It's fine to hope she will go to university and treat university as the norm but you can achieve without going to uni straight after school. In fact a lot of successful, happy and balanced people (because all three are important) trained for a job they loved later in life. Yes, a degree is a prequisite for many jobs now but you can't expect children of 15 to know what they want to do when they pick their A-levels, or children of 17 to make the best choices about uni. Of coure if I had my way I'd make everyone do the IB, bring back a year of national service and apply for uni the term after you get your results but hey ho!
There's a difference between assuming that your DD will follow the new 'norm' for education and go to university and assuming, without any reference to her wishes, that she will go to university. The former is okay and, in fact, a good thing. The latter is just plain silly and will not make your children successful, happy or balanced which is what I think most parents want for their child. I assume that my currently-non-existent children will go to university but if they want to turn round and tell me that actually they'd like to be a plumber and read books about happiness in the evenings then that's fine by me because a plumber is a jolly useful person to have in the family. Of course we'll have degrees in plumbing but then though!