There is more to Uni than a degree

The findings of the Browne Report are out today and the talk everywhere, and rightly, is about university tuition fees. By lifting the £3000 limit cap, and if universities subsequently increase their annual fees, many families will find sending their kid to university a financial commitment they are unable to meet and many students will find it a burden they can do without.

There are those who are strongly questioning the need and viability of a university education – citing that many successful people in the country today have little or no education and there are those who feel that universities have been weakened so much that they are almost a pointless expense not to mention those who feel the increase in university goers has decreased the pool for some vocational industries.

To some extend these are valid concerns. For those who come from an open and diverse house holds and communities university might be purely an academic means to an end. But there are those who are born and raised in analogous households and closed communities, where a university education is more than an academic tool but an opening of the mind and a preparation to a world they would never have been prepared for has it not been for the few years university life afforded them.

It is this group that concerns me. Before the academic and vocational training this group needs to come off the conveyor belt of life, born, went to school, got a job, got married, then retired, and they do all of that within the same 5 miles radius. This is the group that will benefit the most form a University life and the people they will meet and the relationships they make there. They will benefit from the social aspect, no, not fresher week and silly drinking, but meeting people outside their 5 miles radius. Have a genuine opportunity to explore a different life – and learn it in an environment of equal but different peers. And have all these varied and rich experiences before hitting the work place where every man is for himself, regardless of qualifications, and before they are faced with learning and dealing with a new and different set of challenges in the work place.

University, is also were most people finally cut the apron strings, and become free but amongst comparable people of the same age and with like issues and needs. It’s growing up while being independent yet at the same time reliant. It’s maturing with those around you who might not be exactly like you but nevertheless have similar issues to yours.

Did you know young eagles don’t just wake up one day flap their wings and fly, they only learn how to fly when their mother pushes them out of their nest – In other words when she cuts the apron strings. In his book “Even Eagles Need A Push” David McNally said about eagles “Until they learn to soar, they do not discover the privilege it is to have been born an eagle”!

If life is a conveyor belt of being born, going to school then getting a job, how are those who have never been anywhere outside their own domain know there is something different out there, gap years are great but they are not for everyone, nor are internships but a life away from home before fully flying the nest can very much be. How else are we going to give a hand up and offer opportunities to those not privileged or academically talented to meet and fully interact with a large number of people very different to them?

Going to university is as much about the experience as it is about the qualification, and sometimes the benefits of the experiences exceed those gained by the qualifications.