The University Con
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
The University Con
For so long, we have been fed a system that continues to hold so many people in a yoke of mediocrity.
The system is this:
Go to school and get a good education.
Then go on to higher education i.e. College/university and then once you have the letters after your name…
Decide on a career path and get a good job.
Work your backside off and earn as much money as possible in order to have a good life.
Then when you’ve worked for the best part of your life, then hopefully, you would have made wise enough decisions to have a decent pension to retire to.
If not, then your stuck working some cruddy job getting cruddy wages until you are no longer able to work any more!
That system sucks!
The University Con
I personally felt I was coaxed into the idea of university.
Okay, I am not going to blame anybody for my decisions. At the end of the day, I had a great three years at university.
I was able to have my first experience of independence, living without my parents, making new friends, having a lot of fun and I even met my wife there.
I really grew in my three years at university but the benefits of me going there had nothing to do with my career, my dreams or to better my finance opportunities.
To be honest I grew a lot but so did my debt!
I will never forget my high school head of year teacher talking to everyone in a school assembly and encouraging everybody to go to university. I’ll never forget his words:
‘There should be no reason why you shouldn’t go to university!’
I know this was, for him, probably his best intention for us. He genuinely cared about us and our futures. Of course, what could he know? He was only regurgitating what had been imputed to him.
But looking back with hindsight and knowing what I know now, was it really the best advice?
Something David Wood talks about is the fact that so many of us go to university get into thousands of pounds/dollars worth of debt and then come out and get a job that pays us £12 p/hr.
The truth is there are only a few jobs that really require you to have the necessary training and qualifications. For example being a doctor or a nurse, you need to be properly taught and qualified to do the job.
Yet we all get fed the university lie being coaxed into paying thousands to come out with a massive debt and not much else to show for it.
My experience was that I studied a media degree. What a pointless exercise that was. Three years of my life I spent doing something I wasn’t passionate about to then leave with a debt over my head and useless career prospects.
All the job interviews I went for would ask me the same question.
‘What experience do you have?’
My degree meant nothing!
So, after many years of grind and struggle, I discovered something that would change my financial situation, get me out of debt and break me free from the university con for good.