'The Best Years of Our Lives?'

Universities are in crisis, so why are they seemingly the only option?

The university system in the UK is overwhelmed. Last year, almost three million students attended, flooding small towns, local pubs, and eventually trickling into lecture theatres. This year, as we unpack, settle in, entrench ourselves in the Aikman’s basement, and (already!) don our overcoats and waterproofs, student numbers across the country are set to rise; next year, they will rise again. Meanwhile, the facilities to feed, teach, and house these students are struggling to keep up — a fact demonstrated perfectly by the well-documented housing crisis in St Andrews. There are now over 160 universities in the UK, and with each new academic year, student accommodation continues to struggle, lecturer picket lines are built back up, and the university system painfully distributes increasingly scarce resources to an ever-growing student body. Perhaps now is the time to ask the question: “Should all of us be going to university?”

But what else would we do? What else could we do? Higher education is no longer an opt-in or opt-out, but rather a requirement if you want to face the job market with some small hope of an employer picking up your CV. It doesn’t matter if you have no idea of what you want to do because unless you commit to four years of paying £9,250 (much more for our poor international students) to study something as niche and employable as Philosophy or Arabic, it can seem as if you have no chance of getting anywhere at all. 

Worse still, it's not only the job market which holds such a rigid and prescriptive view; young people everywhere seem to cling to the idea that university is the only option out there. When talking about the next step, one idea which never fails to pop up is that of the ‘uni experience’. 

“What do you mean you’re travelling/ getting a job/ in an apprenticeship/ figuring things out/ insert any other life path available — you’re going to skip the best years of your life! You can’t miss out on the uni experience!” As if socialising, clubs, pubs, societies, and even learning are all exclusive to those with a student loan ticking away in the background. As if we should all accept that four short years are going to be the very peak of our lives — no take-backs, it's all downhill from here. 

But really, what else would we do? When a decent job appears as a rare mirage in a wide desert to those who do have a degree, how hard must it be for those without one? It can feel like there is no alternative, but there are so many forms of education available to us which, for many routes, surpass university — apprenticeships, integrated learning, and trade school, to name a few. These simply aren’t advertised or celebrated to any impressionable amount, but they should be. 

Often, alternative routes prepare students far better for a career, giving them practical knowledge and skills applicable to professional life. Employers often complain that recent graduates’ areas of expertise (which we are all spending years honing to perfection) are simply not transferable. We are taught by academics, educators, and experts in their field of study. It is not in their remit to pass on skills from an entirely different field. Moreover, having just worked for a year, I can attest that you often feel more valued in a working environment, where there is a common goal, than in doing a personal dissertation; closer to the rest of society, rather than what we are now — inoculated within a short phase of our lives.

What can we change then? A state-wide transfer of focus from traditional to vocational education could substantially improve the situation. In Germany, students have the opportunity to study both theory and practice within the same institutions. South Korea focuses on developing skills aligned with market skills, to create a constantly evolving workforce. The UK stigma around ‘tradies’, besides the obvious and ill-tasting classism, limits our thinking around education. Plenty more degrees could be more efficiently taught with effectively integrated work — imagine how much quicker it would be for an accounting major to recall tax law, having already audited it for clients, or for an architect to design innovative concepts which people need, having already worked on-site and identified gaps to fill. These students would not only be gaining useful and applicable skills, but also confidence from the fact that they are already a part of their desired field and a part of the economy.

It’s predicted that our generation will be working into our 70s and that we will work in at least five separate fields over our careers; surely a flexible and integrated education system would therefore be more useful throughout the rest of our lives. It would help individuals within our workforce to re-train and adapt. This approach would have a great impact on parents with school-age children trying to re-enter the workforce — a problem felt sorely by women in their middle age. Moreover, if a wider range of ages were engaged in higher education, or indeed vocational education, it would aid social mobility, allowing people who may not have had the opportunity of higher education at 18 the ability to develop new skills and reach previously unattainable goals. 

Alternate options to university education are slept on in this country, in my opinion, to a great detriment — but I have no desire to deny what our university system already gives us. We are incredibly privileged to get to learn, develop, and socialise as we do at university, and I wouldn’t wish to deny that opportunity to anyone. I get to come to one of the most beautiful towns in the country and study the language of a nation 5,500 kilometres away, a country I can’t even legally enter. I get to interact with people my own age, who have similarly weird, niche, and slightly pretentious interests, as well as scholars hundreds of years dead, writing in entirely different worlds. 

That being said, will all three million students attending traditional university this year have the same experience as me? Would they all really be on the same path if there were other choices? We need a new definition of what learning can be — to ditch the idea that uni is the only option.

Illustration by Amelia Freeden