I got a free university education – but I’m hesitant to shell out £50k for my son
I remember the sense of excitement I had going up the huge sweeping drive towards the campus on the hill. It was 1996 and it was my first week at Exeter University.
I fell in love on my very first day – three years of hazy nights, heartbreak and hangovers followed, peppered with a few lectures here and there. And although I hardly ever get a Classics question right on University Challenge, despite having a degree in the subject, I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Fast forward to today and my eldest child, Charlie, who is currently taking his mock GCSEs, is choosing his A-level subjects and debating what subject he might like to study at university.
“Is it really worth going though, Mum?” he asks. “Isn’t it really expensive to be a student?”
He’s not wrong.
Sir Keir Starmer has made university students the latest victims in his pledge to help tackle the economy, by raising tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535 next year. The average student now graduates with £44,940 worth of debt, according to the Student Loan Company, although this will creep up as tuition fees increase.
And what about the cost to us parents? The average cost of sending a child to university beyond tuition fees is around £53,000, according to wealth management firm RBC Brewin Dolphin and Save the Student.
This includes everything from accommodation (which can range from £4,746 to £9,996 per year) to living costs, which average £11,088 per year including bills, transport, food, books and socialising.
The cost of living has gone up considerably since I was a student and while I kept my Nokia brick in the drawer next to the bed and used the university computers, my son expects the latest iPhone and MacBook. And if his penchant for expensive cologne and designer labels are anything to go by, he’d expect another £1,000 a year for trainers alone.
As it stands, Charlie will be eligible for a maintenance loan of just over £4,700 a year, which will barely scratch the surface. The rest of it will have to be covered by us – and I’m not sure it’s worth it.
I was in the last year of university to start before Tony Blair introduced tuition fees in 1998. And as my parents were divorced and I lived with my mum, I was entitled to a grant.
I worked at a pub (the marvellous Dirty Duck in Stratford-upon-Avon) throughout the holidays to help make ends meet. My dad helped pay my rent (which was less than £200 a month in Exeter in the mid 1990s) so I was fortunate to graduate with hardly any debt.
My son is doing 10 GCSEs at grammar school and debating whether to take Maths, Economics and P.R.E (Philosophy, Religion and Ethics) for his A-levels. I would love for him to go on to university, which I remember being told would be “the best days of my life”.
Isn’t putting up posters, pot plants and learning how to make a decent spag bol a rite of passage for young people?
I learned so many vital life skills – how to get on with people from different backgrounds (or, in the case of Exeter, boarding school), how to work to a deadline and that it’s never good to start the night with snakebite and black.
Now I am questioning whether we can justify our son getting into that sort of debt and whether it’s really worth us shelling out at least £50,000 in the process. Who has that sort of money to spare these days? Not me.
As a member of Generation X, I quite often feel envious of my parents’ generation, the fortunate baby boomers, who have paid off their mortgages and benefited from final salary pension schemes.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to afford to retire, but I can see that I am so much better off than my children will most likely ever be. I took having a free education for granted, for starters. Now my kids will never have that privilege.
For some young people doing so-called “Mickey Mouse” degrees, their choice could actually damage career prospects. I have to wonder if a vocational course (don’t plumbers earn an absolute fortune these days?) or an apprenticeship or training scheme might provide students like my son with better opportunities (and less debt) in the long run.’
Despite that, the majority of today’s graduates still think their degree was worth it for the experience they had as a student and the overall benefits. Nine in 10 say they’d go to university again if given the choice, according to a recent study by King’s College London.
Conversely, it also found that around a third of the public don’t think a university education is worth the time and the money, up from 18pc in 2018.
We have less than two years to decide what the future will hold for Charlie, but I’d like to think it will involve a UCAS form, a pot plant and a jar of pesto. You can’t put a price on the university experience, including the hideous snakebite and black, after all. Even if it’s thousands and thousands of pounds.