University isn’t for everyone ...so keep calm and consider all your options

MANY students who received A-level results yesterday now face an even more agonising process – trying to find a place on a university course with only weeks to go before term begins.

While more than 400,000 school leavers have already been accepted on courses, many more have left it to the last moment as they weigh up their options.

This year, however, they won’t find it too difficult.

There are still 26,000 places going begging on university courses – a number which has increased thanks to a dip in the birth rate in 2000.

Universities are reported to be falling over each other to fill these places, lowering the grades required to qualify for courses. School leavers shouldn’t feel under any pressure. They will do themselves a favour by resisting the offers being dangled before them and asking themselves: “Why do I want to go university, what do I expect to get out of it and is it worth the financial cost?”

There is certainly a lure to the idea of going to university. It offers a chance to meet new people, live away from home for the first time and to explore new interests. But above all, 18-year-olds will have it ringing around their heads that a university degree will greatly improve their chances of a successful and rewarding career.

Well, maybe. For some 18-year-olds, going to university will very much be the right decision. If you want to be a doctor or an engineer, you are going to need a degree-level qualification at some stage. The best arts courses, too, can be well worth the money.

For others – and I include myself in this group – it won’t so much be the course which opens students’ minds at university, as the extracurricular things they do.

Yet there are increasing numbers of people who are coming out of university wondering why they bothered.

They have built up large debts and yet in spite of studying hard, they have failed to land a good job. In the 30 years since I graduated there has been a huge expansion in higher

education. In 1990, 19 per cent of young people went into higher education (a figure which includes polytechnics, before they were renamed universities). In 2016, it was 33 per cent. Some would like it to be even higher. In 1999, Tony Blair committed himself to a target of 50 per cent of young people going to university by 2010.

It is very easy to look at the lifetime earnings of graduates and conclude that a university degree is giving people skills which allow them to improve their careers.

But increasing university places does not automatically increase the number of good jobs that will be available. The result of university expansion has been a large number of graduates doing jobs that do not require a degree.

There is a huge variation in employment chances of graduates, both between courses and universities. Among students who graduated from Hull University in 2009, for example, 83 per cent were in sustained employment or further study five years later.

Among those who graduated from London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, on the other hand, it was just 61 per cent.

Five years after completing their studies, 80 per cent of veterinary science graduates were in sustained employment, earning a median of £36,500. Among graduates in creative arts and design, on the other hand, 71 per cent of students were employed, earning a median of £20,000.

There are some pretty lousy courses around – courses where students complain of poor teaching and a lack of contact time with the people supposed to be educating them.

There are dozens of courses on offer which are not accredited by relevant professional bodies.

There is little point, for example, committing years to studying architecture when your qualification is not going to be recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects, which oversees the profession. But poor quality courses aren’t the only problem. There is a lack of correlation between the courses on offer and the career opportunities available at the end.

I wouldn’t want to put off anyone studying music or drama if they are passionate about it.

But anyone doing so needs to be aware that there are vastly more places offered on courses than there are jobs in that area.

There are other fashionable courses – like forensic science which has mushroomed – but where there are tiny numbers of jobs on offer.

I am pleased to have gone to university, but it annoys me how some graduates look down on those without degrees. There was no better demonstration of this than when Remainers inferred that because fewer graduates voted Leave that it was somehow the “stupid” way to vote.

The reason a smaller proportion of Leave voters have degrees is not because they are dim, but because they tended to be older.

They reached 18 when there were fewer universities and it was normal to go straight into a job.

There are large numbers of people aged over 45 who picked up skills via in-job training or part-time courses.

That does not mean they had an inferior education.

With so many graduates coming out of university with large debts and qualifications which are not all they are cracked up to be, the non-university route is something today’s 18-year-olds should be considering too.

FREDERICK FORSYTH IS AWAY