I Will Have Two Children in University in 2017! Mad! 

When I was in school such a long time ago not many of us went to university. Looking back now it was maybe tougher to get a university place, but also for many of us the mentality of society was you leave school and get a job and earn a living which I imagine was inherited from our parents because it’s all they knew. University was considered a place for well to do people and very clever children. I definitely didn’t fit into either category.

The strange thing is that all the people that went onto university went onto have a cost free university education. Oh, how times have changed!

My 21 year old daughter, J, skipped the university route. She finished her higher education and all but went to university, but at the last moment changed her mind and found herself a job. Totally the right decision for her. I think she earns more money than me nowadays, haha!

My 19 year old daughter, E, is about half way through a degree in nursing. She has been lucky that nursing is heavily subsidised so when she leaves university her debt won’t be too bad and hopefully her career choice will always be in demand and finding a suitable job will be ok.

My 17 year old son, A, is approaching his final months of higher education and will be off to university in September. He has an unconditional offer at one university and a place based upon his results in the summer to study product and design. Unfortunately he will be facing a large debt on leaving university in three years time.

We have over the course of the last 20 or so years encouraged our children to go to university and the numbers going has increased to a very large number . The downside of this of course is cost, and as a country we simply couldn’t afford to fund it.

Although the funding is a loan to the individual I believe very little of the money is collected as this will be written off after so many years, which seems to me ridiculous. Why not find a way to fund it from the beginning to produce a generation of very well educated people?

Now I really can’t believe that two of my children are going to be in university at the same time. I’m so proud of them achieving this, and I am also very proud of my eldest daughter in carving out a career in the workplace.