Gemma's Blog

Every year thousands of students are enrolled in University to pursue degree courses. But does a University degree guarantee a better life or job?

Higher education seems to be the latest craze with more than a third of school leavers attempting to gain a place at university. An ideology has been created about student life which involves partying every night and going to the occasional lecture. To some people, University is seen as an ‘easy ride’ and a degree as barely a distinguished qualification, where as some employers will not hire without one. As a student, I thought it was important to look at the pros and cons of doing a degree to decide whether it was worth the time or money.

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We are all aware about out the current recession, however, with the increase of students going to university and taking out student loans, is there any wonder why everyone appears to be in debt? When you are a student, it feels like you have never been put under more pressure or stress than when attending university. There seems to be a constant worry with exams and your next deadline but an added pressure is the build up of money troubles which will continue to grow until we are working adults. Before I started University there was a flood of letters and leaflets from several banks about student accounts and the much sought after ‘planned overdraft’, but is this helping young adults to manage money or setting them up to have a life time of taking out loans and maxing out credit cards? According to an annual poll on debt, students who started university in the UK last year can expect to owe more than £17,500 by the time they leave. Even though the government is helping out more with bursaries and grants, it still doesn’t change the fact that a student loan must be paid back with interest. There is also the issue that loans are income assessed so those who are eligible for a larger amount will then have to pay back a larger amount in the long run apposed to someone with a higher household income who could be helped out by parents.

There also seems to be a confusion with students who are unsure of how much money they a really spending. Evidence of this is from a poll that was carried out by the National Union of Students on 3,385 students at university. The results of a survey showed that the average cost of groceries bought by a student a year was £710 when they only expected to spend £510. This highlights that students are not fully aware of their expenses. Wes Streeting, the president of NUS, has said “It is clear that many students are sleepwalking into financial crisis.”

Aside from the costs of doing a University degree, the press recently picked on the fact that students were finding it hard to get good jobs once they had graduated. However after researching into the matter, specifically looking at research from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), it appears that there are 3.4% fewer graduate vacancies this year than last. Therefore there was more of an issue about graduates entering a tougher market because of the increase in people who have degrees rather than an issue with people without degrees taking jobs over those who do because they have more work experience. It is evident that Universities are accommodating the need for work experience and hands on practice now more than ever because there are a lot of courses that offer placement years.

I feel that to say a degree is an ‘easy ride’ is far from the truth and it seems that the people who generally say those sorts of things are those who have not done a degree themselves. University is not just about a degree because through going, you develop a lot of social skills and becoming independent as it is the first time living away from home for many students. All this can be achieved whilst developing yourself academically and learning more about what you are interested in, to better yourself for a future career.