Daughter goes to secondary school this September, so it’s not a major concern yet, but my feelings are at the present moment that I won’t actively be encouraging her to seek further/higher education.

If she absolutely excels, then obviously we won’t hold her back and if Uni seems the obvious academic choice, then we’d support her as much as we could.

From a personal perspective getting a degree doesn’t necessarily seem the be all and end all, with so many post graduates struggling for work. I left school at 16 and got myself a trade, which saw me alright with a job for 22 years.

I now have my own business and so does mrs STR, so as long as that may continue, then there’s little chance of STR jnr struggling for employment (unless she hates us and/or our respective employment opportunities by then).

It’s a long way off for my two lads but I think we’ll be concentrating on making them feel confident and motivated enough to do whatever they want to. Different kids react differently to education, as long as they finish with good understanding of the basics and empathy/understanding of people and the environment I’ll be happy.

my elsdest is 3rd yr secondary school and seeing as he isn’t skilled in practical ways, i will encourage him to go to university. but i will advise him to do a degree that leads to a job, hopefully. not waste 3 years like i did doing psychology, what a waste of time that was.

no point going to uni getting into a ton of debt to get a mediocre degree from some half baked uni, and then end up in a call centre spending the rest of your ‘career’ paying off your loans. if she is going to get a first in something useful, then crack on. if not then what you suggest (getting a trade, possibly taking over the family business) sounds very valid indeed

I left school at 16 and did an apprenership in engineering and had good jobs till redundancy at 39. I now am self emoployed and would love my 8yr old son to join/take over the business.

I think uni is overrated.

i think if i ran my own business then i would be happy for my child to leave school and work in the family business, then i could retire 😛
but if that isn’t an option then i think uni is the best route for academic kids. if you are more practically minded then apprentiships are probably better . it’s hard to know until they are older, what they are gonna be good at.

the family business is property building and maintainance – ground up.

when i was 16 i had the option of working with them(my grandad and dad+ employees ) with the prospect to take over the landscape side of things initially – basically my grandad wanted to retire.

turned it down.

I did it for 3 summers regardless and it certainly wasnt a job i wanted to be doing for the rest of my puff.

had it been motorbike/car mechanics/engineering then it would have been a different story.

2 more years of school , 4 of uni and got an engineering job working with tool assembly / product testing / design and then running them in the field

the other issue i have with “taking over the family business” – your tied down to where you live really(business dependant) – cant just move to the other end of/another country if and when you want – i certainly want to see the world and not just on holidays

certainly agree with no doing a shit degree though.

really does depend on what the kids want to do. parents dont ALWAYS know best , just a view from the other side of the coin 😉

I think we have to keep our role as a parent in perspective. Surely encouraging your kids in their endeavours is a priority.

I left school at 16 and went to sea. I worked my way up to be a Captain and now working as a Marine Pilot so you can get on without University but you do need to be motivated and work.

I have two sons who seem to be wandering through life without any real direction. The eldest is 3rd year at University studying Mechanical engineering. He is doing fine but still has no idea what form of engineering he wishes to do when he finishes up.

His younger brother is in sixth form but has no idea what he wishes to do when he finishes. He has not even visited any colleges and is just hoping something will come along.

Although I am proud of them both I do wonder how long I will have to financially support them as they are so far away from any tangible employment.

Their friends are all the same, just going down the university road as they don’t know what they want to do in the end. Although I am against the raising of tuition fees, perhaps it will make youngsters think before they sign up at college.

Couldn’t do my job without a degree, and the skills gained, not just the piece of paper. In fact I’m still studying.

Daughter is 8 weeks old so not an immediate worry, but when the time comes I hope she won’t make the mistake of basing her decisions on what she thinks her parents want. Messed up my A-levels royally that did.

I jacked in collage at 17 to take an apprenticeship which I had wanted to do at 16. I served my time as a pipefitter/welder, because my dad was, and my grandad was, and his dad was, you get the picture, 5 generations of pipe strangling of some shape. I started for BG as an adult recruit at the end of my apprenticeship and worked as an engineer for 9 years, before I turned all white collar and became a manager.

I wouldn’t have took this route if it wasnt for my dad, and you know what, I’m glad I did. The trades are such fun, hard graft and good craic. I’ve never spent even a full day in an office, apart from the one I have at home, worked with some great people, met some great customers and generally loved and still love what I do.

I must say, I’ve talked this over with my dad, eldest is 4 and in reception, youngest is 1. I’mn debating whether to send the to a private secondry school, but don’t know if this is the right thing to do

Decisions decisions, and no doubt no help to the OP!

I’m no longer sure I wish my children to enter university (should the opportunity arise). When I was at that stage in life – the financial choice boiled down to whether my parents (and government) would support me. As it was – they both did – and I got a pretty much useless degree in chemistry (albeit from a decent university).
These days the financial choice will be my children’s. I will of course try to support them anyway I can.

I think that it is important to encourage your child to do well at secondary school with that aim possibly resulting in Uni. One thing that is hard to decide is what to do in the rest of your life at such a young age. At 25 I can comment that the idea of choosing your life path at 17 choosing your degree is abit mad. I would say that it is important to also encourage a child to do part time work, so they get a good working ethos and to make them start to realise the decisions they need to make. I think gap years between secondary school and university are highly under rated and give a child room to mature in the ‘real’ world and properly think about weither they want to go to university. I think university is very important if a child proves to be good academically but if they aren’t, hard work and a normal job path is better than wasting time getting a poor degrees. Degrees are worth their weight in gold if they will be relevant to a future job. Even at 25 I wouldn’t have got my current level of promotion at work without my degree despite it not being important for entering the company.

Edit: When I left uni it was starting to get harder to find jobs but not as bad as it is now. Having a varied CV with a long stint working part time then full time in a ‘proper’ job (not a bar) helped me massively. My peers with better degrees grades struggled alot more than me to find a job. I put this down to lack or real world experiences just focusing on their studies and an empty cv other than their degree grade. Gap years or some good work experience is something alot of the students struggling to find jobs are missing.

Personally, I feel that if you are looking at Further/Higher Education purely in terms of the perceived economic benefits, then you’re looking at it all the wrong way. Education isn’t about putting more money in your pocket or bank account, but expanding your mind, exercising your brain and opening up your horizons. It’s about stimulating your imagination, and feeding the desire for knowledge.

If you really must reduce education to mere economic levels, then having a degree can and will open up doors which might otherwise be closed to you. There aren’t many people in ‘top jobs’ without degrees.

Some good advice here, particularly from Solamanda, but also some ignorance too.

Having a degree might not make a person rich, but it can give a person confidence and self-assurance. I know people who shunned educational possibilities, in favour of making money, only to find that they have stalled in their personal development and careers, and are now left feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. While others who have come after them, progress beyond the level they themselves are stuck at.

Back to economics; the wealthiest people I know all have degrees. So do some of the poorest. But as for happiness; I notice it’s those who have a greater sense of fulfilment who are happier. Education may not be essential here, but it can certainly help.

From a personal perspective getting a degree doesn’t necessarily seem the be all and end all

You may well be right. However, you’re not speaking from a position of personal experience, are you? I think it’s unwise to assume what has worked for yourself, would necessarily work for others.

I think the best thing is to let your daughter decide on her own academic future, and don’t let your own misgivings or preconceptions have a negative influence on her choices.

I am in uni now, and I can tell you, I’d still be here even if I wasn’t getting a degree at the end. It is so much fun. Easily the time of my life, and I’m only on my second term.

You can think about costs and value of a degree, but these don’t account for everything. I’m doing a maths degree, but I don’t particularly want to use it when I get out of uni, I’d much rather work as a mountain bike guide during the summer and as a bike mechanic and some sort of sports coach during the winter.

I think the best thing is to let your daughter decide on her own academic future, and don’t let your own misgivings or preconceptions have a negative influence on her choices.

Surely that’s another way of saying, “Don’t offer her any advice at all.” I think that’s the wrong thing to do.

My lad is taking his GCSE’s this year. It’s a very frustrating process. He’s smart but he’s lazy so while everyone agrees he could easily do extremely well, he just does the absolute minimum to get him through, no amount of reasoning, encouragement, blackmail or threats will change his attitude on this. He wants to go to college then uni which we’ll support him in but it’s often massively annoying trying to get him to focus on it.

I’m in agreement with a poster above by the way, I think uni is terribly overrated and I see so many starters who simply haven’t been prepared by their university experience to start doing some work. Apprenticeships on the other hand seem to produce some extremely capable and skilled staff who can hit the ground running and very quickly outpace their university educated counterparts.

My experience in the field also goes along with the above – people with ‘hands on’ experience are generally quite capable of achieving sensible solututions (as long as they have a moderate level of intelligence), whereas it’s sometimes quite astounding as to the lack of practical nouse that graduates actually have at their disposal.

samuri, don’t worry too much. If he is smart like you say, he will come out with As and Bs, and get into any college he wants (within reason). When looking at uni, only the very best (Oxford, cambridge) will glance at his gcse results, so if he doesn’t get 10 A*s, its not really going to effect him.

Also I think going on to college to do just 4 subjects of your choice tends to focus the smart, lazy people, and they will do well.

whereas it’s sometimes quite astounding as to the lack of practical nouse that graduates actually have at their disposal.

That may well be true, I don’t doubt it at all. But it is a bit of a common generalisation though. I live in an area where there are some people with such little education they can barely string a coherent sentence together. They don’t appear to be particularly capable of anything even moderately demanding. I’ve met people who are extremely competent at a very small range of particular tasks, because that’s all they’ve really done throughout their careers, but who aren’t up to much else. I also know people with degrees who can’t wire a plug! I do know graduates that can build a house from scratch, with very little input needed from others. People have all sorts of diverse abilities, which often have little to do with their formal education, but it’s the training their brain has had, which possibly enables them to be more competent at other tasks, than they might otherwise be.

my son is ten weeks old so obviously its a subject that has been vexing me recently. I have started a regular savings plan for Uni but am hoping he will be thick so I can keep it for myslef when he’s 18. In all seriousness though I went to Uni did a degree and then later went back and did a masters followed by a PhD and in that time achieved some things I’m proud of (a few things I’m not proud of too whilst intoxicated) and had great fun. From a finacial point of view I doubt its helped at all especially when i look at my brother who doesnt have even an O level to his name and earns 4times what i do.

I just dont want money to be a problem for Frank when he has to decide, there’s more to uni and education than finacial gain (shame no one has told mr gove that)

When I have kids, I’d like them to go to Uni, and do post-grad too if they’re capable. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t let them go at 18 – I’d make them spend a year working somewhere between GCSEs & Uni. A bit of time spent doing a real job makes a massive difference to your motivation when you get to Uni. Samuri’s kid sounds a bit like I was at school – I did nothing through my GCSEs and managed good grades, but eventually the missed work outweighed natural aptitude!

In my view, good Education is a hugely empowering and transformative experience in itself. So long as you’re taught how to think properly and express yourself clearly, the subject doesn’t matter a great deal. I’d still be choosy about what subjects and unis I’d fund them going to – I work with a load of grads at the moment, and some of them have been very badly served by the system.