There's no shame in walking away if it's not the right thing for you, you can always return to studies later in life.
The only counsel I would give you is to make sure that it's a rational rather than emotional decision.
-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Is university really right for everyone?
- Thread starter Scotrail12
- Start date
- Status
The only counsel I would give you is to make sure that it's a rational rather than emotional decision.
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
I can empathise with that (although, I guess, I was there earlier - early 70s - so am disappointed it hadn't died away). What was annoying was that half the time some of them (ex public school) were selling some Marxist-Leninist/ Trotskyist/ Maoist text or collecting for this group of workers or that and couldn't understand how someone at university claimed not to be able to afford to buy their expensive texts or go on demos every weekend. I was not helped by taking book-lists seriously. I was the first one from the neighbourhood to go to University and stuck it out because I wanted to prove my grandmother right and my father wrong (although I came to realise that it was his way of spurring me on).
One problem that graduates find in some areas is that organisations want to take them on as interns. That inevitably means that they will need to come from a moneyed family (some are decent, but not all are by some way). Others struggle to get any form of employment and end up on minimal pay, particularly if their degree has no practical follow on, is a low level pass at a University close to the bottom of the tables and with no reputation for the subject; they would probably have been better off doing something at a college or in house apprenticeships. Its going to get a whole lot worse once the new 40 year loans kick in.
I agree with this; I failed my first year at university and although it was hinted that I could generate an excuse ("my grandmother's death affected me greatly") and re-take exams I knew it was no longer right for me, so I arranged a letter of support and looked for a different university and degree course. In my case I knew what I wanted to do in a way - the computer industry - so switching from mathematics to a computing degree made sense, even though the latter were in relatively short supply in 1981, and it ended up being a rational decision. I think my parents were more worried than I was.
I had an East Midlands Ranger (I think) and drove to New Mills Central to get the train to Sheffield, thence to London and paying on board for a return Wellingborough-Saint Pancras, then went to see my "new" university, and arranged to get a place. My concern at the time was more about my parents stumping up for the train fare; I now realise they were more than happy given that I seemed to be sorting my future out myself. My "new" university subsequently told me that if I hadn't turned up in person and pleaded my case I wouldn't have got in.
Last edited:
It is called a loan because politicians don't like calling it a tax, and most of the media aren't smart enough to see that they are being hoodwinked.
If you get the opportunity, then listen to Martin Lewis explaining student finance.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Surely, the thing that makes it a loan, not a tax, is that you stop paying as soon as you've repaid the capital plus the accrued interest. Taxes generally don't work like that - with (income) taxes, the amount you pay is limited only by how much you earn.
Looking at a glass half full, rather than a glass half empty, you have kept going for three years, in an environment where you are not comfortable, and with a pandemic thrown in on top. That's an achievement.
You don't say how many more years you still have to do, but carrying on, without any changes, does sound like a risk to your mental health.
One option is to consider how you can do Uni differently in order to get through to the end of your course. Hopefully the Uni and the Students' Union have people who can help you with that. Don't be afraid to ask for help.
The other option is to jack it in. But you should only consider that alongside a plan for what you are going to do instead. You don't want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. The jobs market is very tight at the moment, with more vacancies than registered unemployed, so there are other opportunities if you want to go out and grab them.
But the people who repay all of the capital and the accrued interest are the minority. The majority pay back a partial amount that's limited by what they earn: as you say, that's a tax.
Phil56
Member
It IS a loan, though. In that interest is added to the amount "owed". Taxes don't work like that. And that some people pay off the loan, others don't. The features of it are far more like a loan than a tax. Just because you don't pay it off if a low earner and stop paying it after x years doesn't mean it's not a loan.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It absolutely is a loan, but in many ways it doesn't act like one, principally because it's impossible to default and because it "times out". The proposal to extend to 40 years would make it more like a loan but it'd still be impossible to default.
Phil56
Member
Trouble is, a lot of the clubs/societies simply havn't "re-opened" after the covid years. My son is at Uni, and lots of the clubs/societies mentioned on their website are inactive. Apparently, there was simply no "younger" student members (due to covid years when nothing happened) to take them over when the committees etc left at the end of their courses, so they've basically just lapsed. There didn't seem to be much effort made by the Unis/Student union or whoever, to actually kick-start them again.
As for online clubs/societies during the covid years, my son said most were pretty "quiet" with very little activity. But then again, he was at one of the Unis that basically shut down, barely any staff on campus, whole blocks locked up all year, common rooms locked, etc. So students were already doing everything online, meaning doing even more online (clubs/societies) didn't really appeal after spending all day already staring at a screen.
The majority do not pay off the full amount. What they pay is a partial amount determined by their earnings, not how much they owe. For them it is a tax in practical terms.
It will be interesting to see of the proposed changes to the parameters make much difference to the number of people actually making a full repayment.
Phil56
Member
I think the interest is the biggest factor. Someone earning more in the earlier years of their career, will pay off the loan faster and therefore interest will be less and their total payments will be less. Compared against someone who starts working at a low salary, not making any repayments for several years, interest racking up, then starting to earn more, making repayments, will end up having to pay for longer, and pay more, because they'd have all that extra interest to pay as well. Tax doesn't work like that.
Actually the statistics/estimates say that whilst most people don't repay it fully, that includes loads of people who've made substantial payments, including substantial interest, but still not repaid it all, yet many have long since paid off the actual capital amount "borrowed". So it's very misleading to glibly say "most people don't pay it off" because it ignores the amounts they have paid off.
From https://inews.co.uk/news/education/...xplained-threshold-lower-how-much-pay-1484385
I guess that is what is called 'Levelling up'!
(Anyone thinking of putting off university off for a year might need to bear this in mind.
Morgsie
Member
Forgive me for contributing but I agree with other comments that Uni is not for everyone as vocational courses and apprenticeships should be offered aswell as the option of University and using my own experience once finished university to show that some graduates fall through the cracks and there is hardly any support to get graduates who are on income related benefits into work. I finished university 8 years ago now and it took me a long time to get to university and took me longer to complete my studies due to various mental health isssues. Mental health reasons is why I fallen through the cracks in the system and ended up on benefits. As mentioned there is hardly any support for me to move from benefits into employment and if I were in full time employment then I could be getting less than what I get in benefits. Retraining costs money, retraining as in for example becoming a teaching Assistant with a view to become a teacher down the line. Beacuse I have a degree I am ineligible for the government's free Level 3 courses. I have looked into retraining and costs loads.
Sorry but I am struggling wording the point I am making so used my own experience as an example.
Sorry but I am struggling wording the point I am making so used my own experience as an example.
No need to attend a course for a TA role. As long as you have experience with children (eg volunteering) and show the right attitude, you can get your foot in the door.
As for benefits being more than a salary, life is what you make it and I would say it is worth the loss with long term future in mind.
Uni's not for everyone. There are only two reasons to go to uni:
- Learn more deeply about a subject that you are very curious about, for the sake of learning.
- Certain professional careers do require a degree as minimum entry eg medicine, law, engineering and veterinarian
The best thing I got from my own uni experience was the space and time to question the "wisdom" I was fed at school and take a 180 turn on some opinions that I had prior, and also to become open minded as well!
- Learn more deeply about a subject that you are very curious about, for the sake of learning.
- Certain professional careers do require a degree as minimum entry eg medicine, law, engineering and veterinarian
The best thing I got from my own uni experience was the space and time to question the "wisdom" I was fed at school and take a 180 turn on some opinions that I had prior, and also to become open minded as well!
I would say those are more like the two extremes. There are a whole host of roles for which what you learn on a degree course is useful, but not a formal requirement.
Phil56
Member
Until employers start to be more realistic and not impose a degree as being a minimum requirement/selection criteria for even pretty low skilled jobs, that's irrelevant. Not having a degree has become a barrier that stops people getting past the first phase of selection processes, even for jobs that really, really, don't require a degree. That's simply because so many people now do have degrees, and a degree in an irrelevant subject at the lowest possible level/grade still "opens the door" due to lazy employer selection processes, with those who don't have that magic piece of paper cast aside, often by computer without a human ever looking at their application. Until that changes, school leavers feel under pressure to go to Uni whether they actually want to or not, because it's become the norm.
The specfic examples I cited, Medicine, law, engineering and veterinarian - low skilled job? Otherwise a degree does not need to be minimum entry requirement.
WelshBluebird
Established Member
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Messages
- 4,923
The point being made was that whilst it doesn't need to be, it very much is with employers today. For a lot of entry level jobs, if you do not have a degree then your application will be binned immediately.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
That might have been true in years past, when there were massively more jobseekers than vacancies. I wonder whether it'll continue to be true now that it's the other way round and a lot of businesses - especially in retail - are desperately looking for staff.
The plural of anecdote isn't data and all that, but I've worked for four IT/tech companies in the last 15 years and none of them set a degree as an entry requirement.
I agree, and my partner works for IT companies and doesn't have a degree, but when I worked in the scientific civil service I was a manager and I recruited people. The template job descriptions and requirements which filtered down from "on high" always included ludicrous requirements for academic qualifications, such as project managers requiring a post-graduate qualification.
I worked out that all I had to do was to alter the text to add "or equivalent experience" and nobody complained, my first recruit is now the manager of a systems administration team and he doesn't have a degree.
But anyone not pig-headed enough to go against the system will do the default silly thing, and I've laughed at many "job requirements" adverts from my old organisation for this reason.
Bottom line is that I agree with you, both from sentiment and experience, but requiring a degree for a job which doesn't require one really is probably a common trap, and only partially justifiable if it cuts down the number of applicants.
Phil56
Member
I'm a qualified accountant. My professional qualification is recognised as Masters degree equivalent. But I've been rejected from job applications because I couldn't complete the "university" section of the application, despite putting the professional qualifications in the relevant section. I've also been rejected after interview with the feedback that they'd "prefer" a Uni graduate. That just shows how inflexible some employers are, especially the blue chip firms, FTSE 100, top 10 accountancy practices, etc where you basically don't get a look in without having been to Uni - many simply don't recognise a professional qualification obtained without the degree route.
The posts #81-#83 show the best and worst in British management.
IT and accountancy are two areas where a knowledgeable interviewer can conduct enjoyable and profitable interviews with candidates in that they can discuss technicalities. The problem comes when the members of the interview panel are there because of their status, not expertise. so may have little idea of what the job involves or the technical detail required so they resort to standard fairly open questions, and standard comparisons like quals. Technical quals are invaluable in a job that requires technical skills (as, of course, is experience). The idea that a degree in, say, Classics equips anyone to carry out many of the technical tasks that many of the higher level tasks required by employers today makes no sense.
As someone who has served on short-listing panels, I do have some sympathy. Having 40 odd candidates that need to be whittled down to a suggestion of say half a dozen overnight meant that I used whatever strategy I could to eliminate candidates. Quals wouldn't have been an issue (it would have been a requirement of the job - college lecturer with the ability to teach at HE level) but I can understand why someone in my position would use quals as an eliminating factor. We don't always take recruitment seriously enough. @Phil56 - it is quite possible that some organisations just don't understand professional quals.
IT and accountancy are two areas where a knowledgeable interviewer can conduct enjoyable and profitable interviews with candidates in that they can discuss technicalities. The problem comes when the members of the interview panel are there because of their status, not expertise. so may have little idea of what the job involves or the technical detail required so they resort to standard fairly open questions, and standard comparisons like quals. Technical quals are invaluable in a job that requires technical skills (as, of course, is experience). The idea that a degree in, say, Classics equips anyone to carry out many of the technical tasks that many of the higher level tasks required by employers today makes no sense.
As someone who has served on short-listing panels, I do have some sympathy. Having 40 odd candidates that need to be whittled down to a suggestion of say half a dozen overnight meant that I used whatever strategy I could to eliminate candidates. Quals wouldn't have been an issue (it would have been a requirement of the job - college lecturer with the ability to teach at HE level) but I can understand why someone in my position would use quals as an eliminating factor. We don't always take recruitment seriously enough. @Phil56 - it is quite possible that some organisations just don't understand professional quals.
Jamesrob637
Established Member
- Joined
- 12 Aug 2016
- Messages
- 5,245
Mine too. You must have studied in the 00s or early 10s from the sounds of things, like I did.
I was 09 - 12 and I just can't fathom now why anyone who isn't planning to directly use their degree would even consider it these days. I wish I didn't and that was on a type 1 loan.
patrick.hearn3
Member
- Joined
- 11 Mar 2022
- Messages
- 64
University of Worcester, joint honours history and politics. Do feel free to contact me direct if you wish.
With regard to the finance system, "The value of outstanding loans at the end of March 2021 reached £141 billion. The Government forecasts the value of outstanding loans to be around £560 billion (2019‑20 prices) by the middle of this century." It's a dumb system
Patrick
RJ
Established Member
It certainly isn’t for everyone, but I found it an eye opening experience.
University worked for me. I did a course in transport studies. The industrial placement year created an opportunity to get into a role I wouldn’t otherwise have had an opportunity to do. I since graduated, rejoined the organisation after a summer of freedom and have had a career with them ever since.
One benefit I found from university was mixing with people from different backgrounds - cultures, social classes etc. I’m from a working class background, raised in social housing on little more than the bare necessities and one of the first in the family to complete university. Mixing with people from other cultures, I realised that they were at an advantage because of the way their families and prior places of education primed them for the process of career building and later, financial stability. There are reasons why some people walk straight into £35k graduate roles with a lucrative career ahead. Some people are at an advantage because they have the means to access the opportunities they seek. Having a base in London for example gives access to certain opportunities, but it doesn’t come cheap.
Without knowledge of opportunity, people might not necessarily realise how to make the most of the system. From the first year, some people are quietly attending experience days, internships, summer work experience placements and programmes. They’re building their CVs and social networks which put them in a very strong position by the end of the degree. Especially if they’re decisive on the direction they want to go in.
For those who want to go into senior roles, graduate schemes are a springboard for the right people. If the option is available to get on one then taking it may well prove to be a shortcut to doing so. Over the last 10 years I have watched how things work and the people who rise the fastest change roles upwards frequently, amassing a network along the way.
As for university itself, I started in 2011. Freshers was a crazy experience which had to be done. The course was great, met some wonderful people I’m still in touch with and had many unforgettable times. That said, despite living on campus I never really got into it with societies and the like. I commuted from university to London every weekend because I had no financial support beyond the loan and grant so had to work to pay for the accommodation I was in and small comforts.
Unfortunately for ATOC and East Midlands Trains, they spent the best part of three academic years trying to keep on top of the way I used the rules they published to legitimately reduce the cost of that commute. Which ranged from split ticketing, to making the most of routes unexpectedly permitted by the Routeing Guide, to use of distant “half price SVR” promos, to decimating the cost of peak travel by identifying “supreme value for money” off peak tickets, to stockpiling Super Off Peak tickets that were in the ticketing system at 10% of the market rate (with railcard discount applied to bring it down further). The powers that be devoted resource to shut down the validity and availability of every last one of those routes. This game of cat and mouse ended when I found a legal way to reduce the cost of travelling on the MML to a nice round figure of 0.
I wrote a dissertation on the reliability of night buses but in hindsight I wish I wrote about ticketing or the world of rail replacement services.
Those London based jobs I did were all transport related and I believe they helped to build my CV when the time came to find a career in the final year.
The experience I have means I’ve been able to start my own transport business. Although that doesn’t require a degree, I attribute my time at university to creating the opportunities to get the experience to get to this point.
University worked for me. I did a course in transport studies. The industrial placement year created an opportunity to get into a role I wouldn’t otherwise have had an opportunity to do. I since graduated, rejoined the organisation after a summer of freedom and have had a career with them ever since.
One benefit I found from university was mixing with people from different backgrounds - cultures, social classes etc. I’m from a working class background, raised in social housing on little more than the bare necessities and one of the first in the family to complete university. Mixing with people from other cultures, I realised that they were at an advantage because of the way their families and prior places of education primed them for the process of career building and later, financial stability. There are reasons why some people walk straight into £35k graduate roles with a lucrative career ahead. Some people are at an advantage because they have the means to access the opportunities they seek. Having a base in London for example gives access to certain opportunities, but it doesn’t come cheap.
Without knowledge of opportunity, people might not necessarily realise how to make the most of the system. From the first year, some people are quietly attending experience days, internships, summer work experience placements and programmes. They’re building their CVs and social networks which put them in a very strong position by the end of the degree. Especially if they’re decisive on the direction they want to go in.
For those who want to go into senior roles, graduate schemes are a springboard for the right people. If the option is available to get on one then taking it may well prove to be a shortcut to doing so. Over the last 10 years I have watched how things work and the people who rise the fastest change roles upwards frequently, amassing a network along the way.
As for university itself, I started in 2011. Freshers was a crazy experience which had to be done. The course was great, met some wonderful people I’m still in touch with and had many unforgettable times. That said, despite living on campus I never really got into it with societies and the like. I commuted from university to London every weekend because I had no financial support beyond the loan and grant so had to work to pay for the accommodation I was in and small comforts.
Unfortunately for ATOC and East Midlands Trains, they spent the best part of three academic years trying to keep on top of the way I used the rules they published to legitimately reduce the cost of that commute. Which ranged from split ticketing, to making the most of routes unexpectedly permitted by the Routeing Guide, to use of distant “half price SVR” promos, to decimating the cost of peak travel by identifying “supreme value for money” off peak tickets, to stockpiling Super Off Peak tickets that were in the ticketing system at 10% of the market rate (with railcard discount applied to bring it down further). The powers that be devoted resource to shut down the validity and availability of every last one of those routes. This game of cat and mouse ended when I found a legal way to reduce the cost of travelling on the MML to a nice round figure of 0.
I wrote a dissertation on the reliability of night buses but in hindsight I wish I wrote about ticketing or the world of rail replacement services.
Those London based jobs I did were all transport related and I believe they helped to build my CV when the time came to find a career in the final year.
The experience I have means I’ve been able to start my own transport business. Although that doesn’t require a degree, I attribute my time at university to creating the opportunities to get the experience to get to this point.
Last edited:
- Status