Would you go back to university?

[UndercoverElephant]

Tarrel:
Mathematics and Physics.

A lot more useful than philosophy, for sure.

Renewable Candy:
Inflation or deflation? No-one knows. I've seen convincing arguments for deflation from http://www.theautomaticearth.com/ and many arguments for inflation from other sources. Will it matter to me? I'd be happy enough with £21,000/year that I couldn't care if the SLC took everything above that.

We have inflation and deflation at the same time. Some things are inflating, such as the cost of property, transport and higher education. Other things, most notably wages, are experiencing deflationary pressures because of fear of unemployment and various other reasons.

Who knows how this ends.

I'm very tempted to do it but there is a. the money b. the economy and c. the enemy, me. If I man up I'd get a good grade. If I don't man my most likely trajectory is cleaning for the next 40 years,cancer and death. Depends how long the economy and environment can hold on haha.

A good grade in maths/physics may well lead you to a decent job. It might still be worth doing it.

[RenewableCandy]

It's scaring the bloody hell out of me. But, my son's are far more sanguine about it. They just say that everyone is having to incur that debt and so they are no more disadvantaged than the majority of their peers. But, that they will be disadvantaged if they don't have a degree.

I have heard something similar from many people of that age, and I think it is a very serious mistake. It is the "herd instinct" writ large. Surely, if "everybody else" is doing it, it couldn't possibly be a major mistake, could it? Hundreds of thousands of people can't have got it completely wrong, could they?

Was that what Steve meant, though? Couldn't that post also be meaning, that if there are so many people, left in such a lurch like that, erm well they've all got votes. So the question we all have to ask ourselves, when contemplating Uni, is

Is the Middle Class "Too Big To Fail"?

After all, if you look back at the 1980s, the Working Class wasn't.

[Tarrel]

I think we're back to a common conundrum here; do you prepare for Business As Usual, or for some other future scenario, whatever that may look like.

Looking at the BAU world, I'd say Maths and Physics are a strong, transferable combination. They are "proper" subjects, generally not regarded by prospective employers as a soft option. Also, the impression I get is that a lot of companies are investing in R&D at the moment. My client, a large coatings manufacturer, is taking on research chemists like they're going out of fashion.

In an alternative scenario, conventional wisdom has it that practical skills, useful in a re-localised, powered down world, may be more important than a degree. Having said that, Maths and Physics develop strong analytical skills, help you understand the way the World works, and form a good basis for other, more specialised follow-on subjects which may be more useful in said alternative scenario. Also, there's no reason why one cannot develop the practical skills as well.

Of course, an alternative could be Engineering (but, speaking as an Engineering grad, I'm biased!)

[UndercoverElephant]

It's scaring the bloody hell out of me. But, my son's are far more sanguine about it. They just say that everyone is having to incur that debt and so they are no more disadvantaged than the majority of their peers. But, that they will be disadvantaged if they don't have a degree.

I have heard something similar from many people of that age, and I think it is a very serious mistake. It is the "herd instinct" writ large. Surely, if "everybody else" is doing it, it couldn't possibly be a major mistake, could it? Hundreds of thousands of people can't have got it completely wrong, could they?

Was that what Steve meant, though? Couldn't that post also be meaning, that if there are so many people, left in such a lurch like that, erm well they've all got votes. So the question we all have to ask ourselves, when contemplating Uni, is

Is the Middle Class "Too Big To Fail"?

After all, if you look back at the 1980s, the Working Class wasn't.

The trouble with that is that you are defining "middle class" as "everybody who goes to university", and that has been progressively less and less true since the late 60s. Which is why Steve's sons, whose father comes from a working class background (I presume) and whose politics are entirely based on a working class point of view, think of it as "normal" for them to be going to university. You don't become middle class because you've gone to university and racked up £50K in debt because your parents don't have a pile of money to subsidise you or help you buy a house later on. In other words, it is not about "is the middle class too big to fail?" but about "how big is the middle class, actually?" The "perceived middle class" is going to get much smaller, I think. It won't fail, but a lot of people are going to discover that they never made it out of the working class and into the middle class.

[UndercoverElephant]

I think we're back to a common conundrum here; do you prepare for Business As Usual, or for some other future scenario, whatever that may look like.

Looking at the BAU world, I'd say Maths and Physics are a strong, transferable combination. They are "proper" subjects, generally not regarded by prospective employers as a soft option. Also, the impression I get is that a lot of companies are investing in R&D at the moment. My client, a large coatings manufacturer, is taking on research chemists like they're going out of fashion.

In an alternative scenario, conventional wisdom has it that practical skills, useful in a re-localised, powered down world, may be more important than a degree. Having said that, Maths and Physics develop strong analytical skills, help you understand the way the World works, and form a good basis for other, more specialised follow-on subjects which may be more useful in said alternative scenario. Also, there's no reason why one cannot develop the practical skills as well.

Of course, an alternative could be Engineering (but, speaking as an Engineering grad, I'm biased!)

Maths and physics are skills that are, I think, transferable into a non-BAU world. Or at least they are more transferable that a lot of other things are.

[woodburner]

OMG, I agree with UE, though what do I know about university? There are careers which reasonably demand a university education. Medicine, law, sciences, classics etc, but there are many which don't. Many universities are rebranded technical colleges, which as such, did a fine job, and were well respected.

Nowadays there are modular "degrees" in almost every trivial subject.

People now bristle with certificates for all sorts of "skills", but are often incompetent in their subject. Employers are beginning to revert to the older selection methods of assessing whether someone can do the job required.

[RenewableCandy]

UE, wasn't Steve a teacher before turning to Horticulture? I think that puts someone right in the middle of the middle class. I am unashamedly middle class and regard Uni as pretty-well a defining factor.

I think you're right that the middle-class will get smaller. But that doesn't mean that all the extra people who have had the chance to go to Uni aren't there at the moment.

I also think that the middle-class will have to reinvent itself as things change. This may be easier for the "new" families in it than it is for people like me, who have known no other life.

[Little John]

I have heard something similar from many people of that age, and I think it is a very serious mistake. It is the "herd instinct" writ large. Surely, if "everybody else" is doing it, it couldn't possibly be a major mistake, could it? Hundreds of thousands of people can't have got it completely wrong, could they?

Was that what Steve meant, though? Couldn't that post also be meaning, that if there are so many people, left in such a lurch like that, erm well they've all got votes. So the question we all have to ask ourselves, when contemplating Uni, is

Is the Middle Class "Too Big To Fail"?

After all, if you look back at the 1980s, the Working Class wasn't.

The trouble with that is that you are defining "middle class" as "everybody who goes to university", and that has been progressively less and less true since the late 60s. Which is why Steve's sons, whose father comes from a working class background (I presume) and whose politics are entirely based on a working class point of view, think of it as "normal" for them to be going to university. You don't become middle class because you've gone to university and racked up £50K in debt because your parents don't have a pile of money to subsidise you or help you buy a house later on. In other words, it is not about "is the middle class too big to fail?" but about "how big is the middle class, actually?" The "perceived middle class" is going to get much smaller, I think. It won't fail, but a lot of people are going to discover that they never made it out of the working class and into the middle class.

On the one hand, a degree now is a shit load of debt for potentially little return. On the other, hand, the chances of earning even a pittance is all but impossible without one.

Hobson's choice.

[BritDownUnder]

I went to University both in the UK as an 18 year old and here down under as a 33 year old to do Electrical Engineering. The best decision I ever made was to do it again. Before I studied Engineering my career was pretty much in ruins and I only used the science degree I did in the UK for about 3 years. After that I worked mostly in finance.

Over here Engineers are still in demand although the economy is slowly deteriorating. Loans weren't too high. I paid them off after 2 years. I even got money from the government as study support over here after being declined a student loan after my brother finished university in the UK.

My advice is to do something useful though, meaning a science or engineering. Don't worry about the loan!

[UndercoverElephant]

That's a pretty "colourful" family history, to say the least. Mine is also very f***ed up, but rather less complicated! As for what class I belong to? I really don't know how to answer that question. My mother was working class, the 4th child from an East End family with an invalid father. My father's father ran a bike shop in South London, so lower middle class. Both my parents ended up doing middle class jobs, but I always rebelled against middle class aspirations and have always had the same problem with authority as you have (father was a useless (in terms of personal relations) alcoholic, school was a sink comprehensive, CofE church was a joke...where was the authority figure I could respect?) Then I quit my middle class job, went to university and ended up doing something so unorthodox that it does not fit anywhere on the normal scale.

[PS_RalphW]

I used to think, as a son of scientist, that our family was classless. Parents were definitely born working class, my mum in poverty, daughter of a watch-mender. Dad was son of a signalman and seamstress. Dad was a grammar school boy who had the good fortune to get a scholarship into a physics degree at the forefront of electrics and radio communication research in 1939, just in time for the war effort. However, after the war class reasserted itself, and in practice my dad was passed over for his ancestry, in spite of his BBC pronunciation. Being educated and cultured was not enough.

I was lucky to be educated at the peak of the tax -funded generation, although my Chemistry degree has never been put to direct use, the scientific training and overlap into physics and maths is invaluable. It's a bit like in the film Matrix, where the programmer can view the medium and see the underlying code (or vice versa) - I look at natural world and see the underlying physics, particles and forces.

I would be very nervous of going into debt for education now, but then I am over 50 and have a family to support. I was never that dynamic. A good scientific education is a fine thing, but there are no guarantees, and I am a much more cultured and complete person now that I was as a callow graduate who knew it all at 22.

[Ralph]

My advice is to do something useful though, meaning a science or engineering. Don't worry about the loan!

My usual response to this type of question, one roundly criticized back when the world was supposed to end, but looking a little better now that it hasn't (surprise surprise) is if you go to university, you take the most difficult program they have available, in the most difficult specialty you can manage, and do your best to be better than everyone else in the program.

With the proliferation of interesting but irrelevant topics of study (women's studies, basket weaving, the meaning of life, leadership) it turns out that just having a degree has been devalued by the proliferation of such nonsense, and it is now necessary, even when the degree comes from the better schools (Ivy League for example), to examine the actual subjects studied and degree achieved.

[UndercoverElephant]

My advice is to do something useful though, meaning a science or engineering. Don't worry about the loan!

My usual response to this type of question, one roundly criticized back when the world was supposed to end, but looking a little better now that it hasn't (surprise surprise)

Troll. Nobody said the world was going to end. You are getting Peak-Oilers mixed up with evangelical end-timers from your native US.

[clv101]

Whether or not to go to university is not at all straight forward these days. I've spent 9 years in universities (fortunately paid for all but one year!) and done a few OU modules and MOOCs.

I think the whole field of higher education in the UK is changing rapidly. Going to a top ~20 university and taking a course resulting in directly marketable skills is hugely valuable to the individual. However most people go to the other ~140, or take less overtly 'useful' courses. In these cases, I expect many could find a better use of 3+ years of their lives and the significant investment.

Also note that the rapid rise of massive online open courses does now genuinely put high quality education in your lap for free - if you have the motivation for self study.

Whether or not today's student loans will ever be paid off by folks who never earn a good wage is another interesting question. The recent sale of student loans by the Government represented a huge write down and the admission that most wen't being paid back at all and they even lost contact with some 40% I think! I wouldn't worry too much about the actual loan - more the opportunity cost of the 3+ years.

If I had 17 year old child, I'd be very happy to see them go to a good uni / useful course. But I'd also be very happy if they wanted to do something more vocational. I might have concerns if they wanted to do a BA in 'Events Management' or 'Tourism and Travel Management' at London Met, I'd be concerned.

[Snail]

Ralph is right about doing your best to be better than anyone else in the course. Average isn't good enough anymore. Focus like an Indian whose parents have had to sell the family farm to send you to university! And use the time to make connections with people and network etc.

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CIV wrote:

that most wen't being paid back at all and they even lost contact with some 40% I think!

I have to send the SLC evidence every year that I'm earning below their specified amount. Just wondering after reading this if it's viable to ignore them for 6 years or so as, I believe after this time, creditors are unable to legally pursue you? What do people think? (sorry for the tangent but I've wondered this before). The debt wouldn't be gone, but maybe this would offer some protection if the T&Cs change.

Edit: just found pre-98 loans can be statute bound, post-98 aren't.