University may be useful, but to what degree?

So, it’s the time of year again when the media is full of talk about the flood of teenagers wanting to come to university. Inevitably the number of places needed just don’t exist, and there will always be some, whether rightly or wrongly who just will not get a place. As budgetary cuts start to take their effects the situation can only get worse.

But is this such a bad thing? Young people in this country seem to have adopted a mentality where they believe there is no option but to go to university. People seem to have shut themselves off to the other options. I know this because that is precisely the mentality that I had a year or so ago. I had been indoctrinated both at home and at school that the best thing for me to do would be to go to university. And perhaps this was right, but I was given a very strong impression that that was the only thing to do. It was if there was no choice. And I’m sure I’m not the only one in that situation. Many of those who received their A levels last Thursday and are now finalising their university plans will not have thought about doing anything else. They, like me will have felt that they needed to get a degree. Maybe it is an attitude prompted by their families or their schools, or perhaps it’s the constant government targets that are being issued. Labour’s obsession with getting 50% of 18 year olds into university can only have made this situation worse.

No doubt many will accuse me of elitism, but why are we, as a society encouraging everybody to go to university? And yes, I believe that making the system more elitist would actually be the answer. The condemnation of ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees becomes repetitive, but scrapping sub standard degrees is one solution to the problem. But on its own it’s not the answer. Even those of us lucky to study good quality degrees at a well respected university such as York should be questioning whether we really need to be here.

Is a degree really necessary? For those who want to enter professions such as medicine, teaching, law or become academics there is no doubt that a degree is a pre-requisite. But for those of us who would like to become journalists, to enter the world of business or commerce, to become engineers or become social workers is it really necessary to have a degree? Just because you are academically able, or have come from a family with a long background of university education it does not mean that university is the only route. It seems to me that in the future, perhaps sooner than many people would find comfortable, people who have traditionally not thought twice about going to university will be considering their options far more carefully.

There seems to be a stigma that has spread through society like a deadly virus, against those who decide to pursue something other than a university option. And it is this stigma that has discouraged academically able people from going straight into work, or taking up apprenticeships. They have been seen as a second rate option, somehow inferior to going to university.

And it is this stigma, rather than any great desire to further myself academically that brought me to York. Admittedly it has been a fantastic year but the reality is that I didn’t need to be here, and three years and thousands of pounds spent on a degree and an expensive social life will probably have been wasted. I don’t want to sound as if I regret coming to university. My only regret is that I didn’t stop to think about the alternatives, as I, like most other sixth formers in this country was brainwashed into thinking that it was the only route to take if I wanted to retain a slimmer of respect and dignity.