Unit 34
I Won't Let Our Boy Go to University
I've refused to allow my stepson Jim to go to university because it will be too expensive and a waste of time. People think I'm selfish or uncaring. But I think more parents will come to accept my way of thinking. Britain's university system is failing to serve either society or our children.
I can't remember when I began to change my mind on education. Like many middle-class parents, I had assumed that going to university was what children should do. It's one of the reasons we sent im to an expensive private boarding school with a good academic reputation, rather than a weak but free local one. Education was more important than nice cars, new kitchens, or skiing holidays.
Jim is a teenager of whom any parent would be proud. He's charming, considerate and helpful; he's a genius at things like hanging pictures and mending door handles; he's good with children; he's handsome. But he's shown little interest in study.
It's not Jim's intellect that's the problem, but an inbuilt reluctance to do any more work than necessary to get by. We've tried every method to make him work harder: blackmail, bribery, threats. None of it has worked. For his final exams, Jim got a D and two Es. Even allowing for our low expectations, this came as a shock to his mother and me.
"Surely", I suggested to Jim's teacher, "the course Jim got on with such low marks would be the sort of course that wouldn't be worth doing anyway." "Not at all," the teacher insisted, and then named a string of universities I'd barely heard of, claiming they'd be perfect for Jim.
It was at this point I realized how completely out of touch I was with the current educational thought. In the early 1980s when I was at school, a student with such poor grades as Jim's would never be considered university material. Since then the percentage of eligible population in Britain has risen from 14% to an astonishing 44%. The educational system is cramming even the most mediocre students into a degree curse.
It affects the sort of the courses that universities offer: undemanding ones such as film studies and surfing; it affects the way universities advertise themselves -- with student bar sizes and local clubs given priority over the quality of the courses.
Another fact is that when I went to university, a degree still counted for something. These days, the degree is so devalued that you are far better off going straight into the job market than spending three years treading water, running up big debts.
Maybe it would be worth it if, as a result of his or her degree, your child would have a well-paid career. But there are now too many graduates running after too few graduate obs, and employers are becoming suspicious of the value of degrees. |