Should I worry if my Year 13 daughter does not want to go to university?

[Lightmayo]

My dd is in Year 13 at college. She works hard, on target for good grades and has said she doesn’t want to go to uni. She’s not sure what she’d study. But I worry about her missing out on the uni experience. 80% of her cohort are likely to go to uni following the figures college released on last year’s cohort. I worry she will be lonely as college with friends has been very very mixed and she’s not got a strong group and we live in a small town.

Your dd is being smart by not drifting into loads of debt for a course that she’s not sure about.

Not going at 18, doesn’t mean that she’ll never go. Uni is open for older students after all.

If expect her to think about next steps though. Maybe work or another qualification (like a higher level of whatever she’s studying now?)

Does she currently have a part-time job? Has it given her some ideas about her future?

@Keepoffmyartichokes Yes but are the banks now recruiting grads? No doubt a few apprentices but I suspect most will be grads.

But I worry about her missing out on the uni experience.

if you're that worried, why don't you take on the £60k debt?

She will then get the "uni experiece" and still be able to get a student loan later in life when she has figured out what she wants to do.

@HelmholtzWatson Do you know how student finance works? There is a tax to be paid and the op could sub dd. The whole issue is about - would dd get a better job and career with a degree. Obviously many still do. Quite a lot don’t so degree and uni matter. Not going can make sense if you want building trades, but if you want to be a lawyer, you need to go.

No point getting into debt for nothing. Plus, many people don’t like the ‘uni experience’. Dirty bathrooms and kitchens, noisy drunk flatmates, no thanks!

Support her to see it as a gap year or two while she figures out next steps towards a career of some kind. She can make friends thru work or hobbies. It is not a big deal. She can study more later.
Agree her £ contributions to the household.

Yes they still have grad schemes but you can also get a job in a bank and work your way up and that doesn't have to mean starting in a branch. The majority of the leadership team at my bank started in a branch or in the call centre.
Personally I think Uni now is only worth it if the job absolutely needs it. If there is an alternative path then that's the way to go and avoid mountains of debt.
My husband is very high up in IT he doesn't have a degree and no one he works with does, they all worked their way up through the ranks. There is no shame in it.

from a young age my nephew wanted to be a chef. At 14/15 he got a part time job in a pub as a kitchen assistant. The head chef could see he was keen and took him under his wing and he learnt a lot.

At 18 he scraped his A levels and got onto a degree course in Hospitality Management but changed his mind and wanted to learn from grass roots up. My brother and his ex (nephew’s mum) were up in arms. How would he open his own restaurant without a degree? I was taking the piss and saying, ‘yeah, of course Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver went to Birmingham Uni didn’t they?’ Anyway he’s now 32 and a very successful head chef.

im old, when I was young if you wanted that career when I was his age, you went to the technical college, did your c&g and then went to a hotel or restaurant to put your skills into practice. What next- degrees to be a hairdresser or car mechanic or bricklaying?

Do you know how student finance works?

I'm a uni lecturer, so yes.

I get you OP as my son is also not sure about university.

I did have the time of my life, but that was years ago! It was also free!!

I now teach at a university in London and about 50% of my students are strangely ambivalent about the experience; many live at home and tell me that if they had their time again and there were viable alternatives, they wouldn’t bother.

The problem is that the alternatives are not particularly well advertised. People talk about apprenticeships and clearly in the trades and accounting/law these exist. However other post 18 options don’t make it clear whether it’s a proper post A level “scheme” where the young people will be with a cohort of other young people or whether it’s just a “job”.

For many young people it’s the “ fear of missing out” rather than the desire to go to university per se. If there were other “jobs” where they could guarantee they’d be with a crowd of similarly aged people, earning a bit of money and having fun, there would be far less angst.

Agree with this - with Uni it's not 'now or never'.

She might find in a year or two that she isn't where she wants to be with work and social life and decide to give Uni a go. Or she might have found her passion and be working her way up in that.

Seems sensible to take some more time to figure it out as Uni is a much better experience if you're sure you want be there and you know what you want to study. At 18 my nephew was adamant he didn't want to go to uni, he worked for 2 years and then did a business degree.

She works in a gym at the moment. She could potentially look for an apprenticeship through that. Degree apprenticeships seem so hard to get and I think she’s worried that she won’t be good enough for that. She doesn’t seem to have a concrete plan at the moment. She does work hard and picks up extra shifts at work. Home life is a bit tough as her brother is profoundly disabled so she’s not had things particularly easy as her brother can be violent and I think her mental health has been hit hard.

Her college push uni really hard and she says apprenticeships are rarely talked about. My DH didn’t go to uni and worked his way up so his opinion on uni is that it’s not for everyone, especially if you don’t have a plan which at the moment she doesn’t. I think she’s tired of studying.

I think a bit adrift from whether a degree genuinely opens doors if you’re very much a middle student. It seems very tough for kids these days. Uni is expensive and theres so much competition.

At that age the rule in our home is study or work full-time. Working part-time is not acceptable either.

Luckily it sounds like your daughter is motivated to work. If she doesn’t go to university and goes to work then I would take a reasonable amount for rent and save it for her. I’d make it a condition of being at home that she revisited her decision after 6 months and a year. I’d also encourage her to look at other courses, upskilling or saving to travel to broaden her experience.

Opting not to go to university straight away or even at all is not a terrible decision for some young people.

@Lightmayo There is less unemployment amongst grads than school leavers. Apprenticeships do offer a way to work yourself up into a decent job but degree ones are hugely competitive. Has she looked at what’s available that’s non degree level?

Gym careers are somewhat limited so she really needs career guidance. Is this a big gym company with many levels of jobs, or a single enterprise? She should look at the career structure and talk to HR. Do they only employ grads in management trainee roles for example? Do they have apprenticeships? Is there a variety of roles she could aspire to?

To be blunt. She possibly needs to leave home and make her own life away from family ties. What plans do you have for her sibling, or will they become her responsibility? If her life has been curtailed, why would your dh think that should continue? Seems unsupportive to me.

Uni isn’t for everyone tho
think of the debt to start with!

there are lots of other options I wouldn’t worry at all!

my 2 adult children went to uni however both had clear ideas of what future job they wanted and still lived at home as we have a few amazing unis within 10 miles of our home, so not the “typical “ uni experience (especially when at uni during Covid) but both have degrees and have amazing jobs earning good money for their ages and no debt.

I have a relative who did an apprenticeship straight from school , worked on the tools for years , found a great company and has worked their way up to managing director, not bad for someone who left school with basic qualifications.

if your child doesn’t want to go to uni then that’s fine but they need to have an alternative plan for their future.

I have the opposite worry. My son wants to go to uni. Trying to put him off.

@Divinedownload I guess he doesn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer then, or an engineer? Why such low expectations?

I think that your daughter needs some guidance about what she could do after leaving school. She is right not to go to university straight away into a course she may not like and to end up in a lot of debt for this.

I know a bright lady and she decided to take a gap year after doing her final school exams. She wanted to look into courses before applying for university. She did some computer courses. She worked PT in the local supermarket. She also learned to drive by and got her driving test.
She applied for university the following year. She had her good results and did a degree. She went abroad to do her masters and did a PhD in that country then. She is still living abroad and has a very good job.
She said that taking the year off but with a plan made of what to do then was the best thing she did.

I know here in Ireland that we have post leaving cert ( our a level's) courses. These course are often for 1 to 2 years and generally have exams, projects and a practical element. They also can include a period of work experience. They have a recognised qualification at the end. Some people say do caring, social care or a pre nursing course and then go on to do a degree in nursing, social care ect. It gives people a chance to find out what a job is like, get a qualification to get a job or to get into a degree.
I don't know if they have the same in the UK but something like this might suit your daughter.

I think that paying for career guidance and for her to do some tests regarding job areas and courses could help her now. Long term you want her to do well in her exams and to have a good career that pays well. From what you said she works in school and looks for more hours in her part time jobs so she has a good work ethic. She needs a bit of help to see what options are open to her now and what could suit her as a person also.

I know a number of people in university at the moment but they all did research on there courses, the content and job opportunities afterwards.
They wanted to do the course and are attending lectures and putting in the work to get good results. They have gotten work experience as part of their course as well with well known companies.
They said unless there were interested in the subjects and put in the work they would be failing exams.

Because if I am being honest I don’t think it will do him much good. He’s not going to be a doctor. He passed all his GCSEs at grade 4 and 5. He’s doing a business level 3 diploma at college which technically could open the door to uni. He is motivated but the higher academics is out of his league.

Not sure if that’s appropriate tbh. Surely he would be better off just getting an apprenticeship at 18 in business admin or accounts? (He is loving the accounting module at the min). He can can apply himself but he’s not super academic. Uni feels like too much of a gamble. But then am I clipping his wings? Obviously I don’t tell him uni is a waste of time but it’s not something I actively encourage.

I was pressured and pressured from a very young age to say what I wanted to do. It was pushed into a job and not allowed for go to university. It made it miserable for years.

I suggest that at 13 you just focus on what you enjoy and what you’re good at.

@Divinedownload, my daughter got a mix of GCSE grades around that level and is doing a mix of level 3 and A-levels at college. So I’m unsure if academically university would be the right place.

The gym she works at do offer apprenticeships and she’s looking into being a swim teacher. Where she studies the focus is very heavily university. There isn’t much in the way of career guidance outside of that.

I’m encouraging her to look at anything she thinks she’d enjoy and would have the skills to do.

We do not expect her to take on the responsibility of caring for her sibling. We wouldn’t ask that of her ever. It has been life altering for her enough that I wouldn’t ask her to become a carer for her sibling.

She’s a great kid but at the moment seems pretty overwhelmed by school life, work and friendship dynamics and I do worry about her mental health.

Things seemed a lot easier many years ago with regards to jobs. I’ve encouraged her to have a look at university open days but suspect a working gap year might suit her though I worry she might be a bit lonely (small town).

It’s ridiculous when people pay thousands and get thousands of pounds of debt just for the uni experience! If they want to go and study then fair enough but just for the experience is daft

She can't go to Uni just to make friends. She needs to get a job or you fund a, gap year and make friends there

@Lightmayo A swimming instructor is poorly paid with no career structure. Could she consider being a teacher? Do an education degree? How could she move out if she just instructs swimming for a living?