University

We're talking to the barmaid, a student nurse. She's talking about, to her mind, the folly of going to university. Her long term boyfriend is now in his mid-late twenties. He has a Master's degree. He's now seriously wishing he never went to university. He's been out of work for a while since leaving university, only being able to get occasional menial work. He has finally managed to get a job that requires the use of his brain.

But he looks at his friends, of similar age, who never went to university. They are now in the midst of buying their homes, starting families, & with reasonably secure jobs (if there are such things these days!), while he is disappearing under a mass of debt from student years. All that education hasn't enabled him to get a good well-paid job as he was promised. Even now he doesn't feel secure in the job he's just starting.

Sophe, the barmaid, says she wouldn't recommend university to anyone unless they are doing a degree directly related to their work, as nursing is to hers. Her boyfriend's was a more general degree in sports science.

I can't help thinking how different it is from our day, when the state gave grants. I know many of my contemporaries left university with debt even so but nothing nearly as large as graduates have today. It was possible to live on that grant, especially if you could boost it with some vacation work. For me that meant market research, working the conveyor belt packing food for the planes at Manchester airport, looking after children. For the Fox it meant night shifts at a local factory. We question if either of us would have bothered going to university if it had meant starting our post-graduate life with huge debts.

That's not to say, I regret going to university. It didn't secure either of us that well-paid career. But personally I feel it was worth it for my own personal development, for making me the person I am. I may have got there anyhow. I don't know. But I certainly grew from a child into a woman then, & what is more, a woman with confidence & resilience to take on whatever life has thrown at me.

University is valuable, but is it worth being burdened with thousands of pounds' worth of debt at that time in life your thoughts so often turn to marriage, buying a home & having a family? I'm not sure. Sophie may well be right, unfortunately.