Robin Drummond: Approaching university with a degree of caution

Everyone around me seems to expect me to go university.

My parents and teachers are pushing me in that direction, as is happening for my friends. There is quite a lot of pressure surrounding my decision. It looks like I will apply but I do wonder if it’s the right decision for me or just a product of the education I’ve had.

That’s what the two programmes I’ve made with the BBC are looking at. What’s the right step forward? Is university the best option? Is a degree worth the paper on which it’s written?

In reviewing whether or not uni is right for me I first had to weigh up the positives and negatives of going.

To better understand what the university experience is like I interviewed three Edinburgh University undergraduates; International Relations student Gillian McPherson, English literature student Calum Lesley and history student Alasdair Drennan. They told me that in terms of what they’re learning there is nothing fundamentally new, it’s mostly a development of the skills they were taught at school.

Calum spoke a lot about being able to form an opinion and argue a point with the critical skills he has learned. For Gillian a major benefit has been finding out how to manage the vast amounts of information she has to handle. So there are obvious benefits in attending uni from an educational point of view, but as so many people say university isn’t just about the education you’ll get. There are massive social experiences to be had as Alasdair told me. He has been to both China and Sweden just because of friends he has made through being at university.

Possibly the most important reason for getting a degree is employability. And as I found out at the careers desk at Glasgow University’s open day, a degree is armoury in a recession. When fighting for a job the experience of higher education is a powerful weapon and one I would certainly like to be wielding.

Still looking at employment, when I had to interview the director of Universities Scotland, Alistair Sim, he told me that graduates are currently expected to make £170,000 more, on average, than a non-graduate over the course of their working life. Now that certainly sounds worthwhile for four or five years of study. But is there a job for every graduate? Is that job worth the time and effort of uni?

I spoke to Jane Wiley Roberts head of Staff Finders Recruitment and she had some bad news for me. I’m quite interested in going into teaching after university so I asked Jane how the jobs market was in that area. Not good. Her advice was just to drop teaching and find something else as the odds are against me for finding work as a teacher. So this is one of the possible pitfalls of going to uni that I found. If there’s no job for me what’s the point?

I do have other options open to me, director of Notgoingtouni, Sarah Clover explained in more depth. She made me think about an apprenticeship, college or just going straight into employment. Rupert Goodwins, journalist, broadcaster and editor of ZDnet, never went to uni and as his peers struggled with the studying, he built up experience and now he’s doing better than most of his contemporaries who did graduate.

In the second program I review what is for the biggest downside to university, cost. Though Scottish students are lucky enough to not have to pay anything for their degrees, there is still a huge cost for accommodation, meals, books and other resources.

At Glasgow University’s open day I got my first taste of this huge cost. I found that for accommodation in halls I would be looking at spending roughly £4000 per year. When speaking to the Edinburgh University students I got a chance to go into more in depth on the price of higher education for students now. Alistair stayed in catered halls for his first year and that cost him £6000, now he stays in a rented flat with two friends and is paying £400 a month for rent. On top of that he obviously has to pay for his meals.

I have friends who have moved out and gone off to uni and seem to be surviving on Supernoodles and sachets of tomato sauce from McDonald’s. Then Calum tells me the cost of his books and resources. He spent more than £200 in his first week of university and now spends about £500/600 a year. So now we’re looking at about £8000 a year. Is uni worth all that debt? Add in the stress and volume of work and the possibility of not having a job afterwards and it becomes less and less appealing.

* The first part of “Is a Degree Worth The Paper

That It’s Written On?” is on BBC Radio

Scotland from 2pm to 2.30pm tomorrow. Robin continues his investigations at the same time next week