You may well have gone to university. If so, would you do it all over again? I expect so. One survey of recent graduates found 96 per cent of them would do it again. If you haven’t gone but are thinking about going to university you should almost certainly go for it. You won’t regret it. It may well turn out to be one of the most rewarding and transforming experiences of your life. But what is it that makes more and more of us go to university when the media are full of stories of graduates who are unemployed and the usual clichés that too many people go to university? And why are record numbers of young people going even after the changes in student finance, which I helped to bring in, mean that graduates are likely to be paying back more over their working lives? Just look at the newspaper headlines: . . . Thousands of new graduates out of work, figures show. Expansion of the university sector has destroyed its status. UK graduates are wasting degrees in lower-skilled jobs. Today’s university students are being sold a lie. . . . Is College Worth It? is a very fair question, and the American book with that title answers with a clear ‘No’ for many people, many courses, and many institutions. The conventional wisdom is that going to university is often an expensive waste of time. But for most students the truth is the opposite. For most young people it is a deeply rewarding, life-changing experience. And it matters particularly if you come from a poor background because then it really could transform your chances in life. I meet parents who think that too many people go to university but definitely want their own child to go—it is the other parents’ kids who aren’t supposed to go. But the other parents might not see it that way. A survey of mothers of children born in the year 2000 showed that even for the mothers with the lowest qualifications 96 per cent wanted their child to go to university.
Attitudes towards student support: How positive feedback-effects prevent change in the Four Worlds of Student Finance
