Yes, university is a waste of money - but you should still go

A university degree doesn’t always mean higher earnings further down the line. In other wildly unsurprising news, England is rainy, and Taylor Swift is quite popular.

According to a new breakdown of figures by The Times, the Government is sitting on around £260bn in student loan debt, much of which seems unlikely to ever be paid back.

While the numbers across the board look pretty glum if you’re totting up the national finances – the average student owes £26,000 – they do break down along clear lines: students from high-performing universities are more likely to have paid off their loans than those who studied at low-performing ones.

Frankly, the whole thing makes me roll my eyes, because the debt now being shouldered by the Government was not only predictable but entirely self-inflicted after university fees were raised to £9,000 per year back in 2012. The more you lend, the more you’re owed – that’s hardly degree-level maths.

At the time, the coalition government’s move was justified by “fairness” – namely, the idea that as graduates would benefit so much from their degrees, they should be the ones to pay for them. But besides the objectionable idea of paying for education in the first place, it seems blindingly obvious that, if fees are supposed to correlate with future earnings, charging all students the same amount makes absolutely no sense.

Do you think the average creative writing grad earns anywhere near as much as the average economics buff? How about a student at Bolton, where 10 per cent of taxpayer funds were paid back, versus someone studying at Imperial, where the proportion was four times higher at 40 per cent? And does it follow, then, that we should only do the degrees that have the best chance of spitting us out as millionaires at the other end, or discourage less academic kids from embarking on the rite of passage that uni has become, if they want to go? Absolutely not.

I don’t want to live in a world where money is the only way we calculate someone’s worth or contributions to society. Surely, even the most dedicated philistine acknowledges that the creative industries, for instance, add value to our lives, even if the people who work in them famously make a pittance. Collectively shouldering the cost of a few degrees in exchange for a society with diverse thoughts and dynamic ideas seems a small price to me.

What’s more, even if university did guarantee improved earning potential, that’s arguably the least it can offer. The experience of being surrounded by people your age, with years to focus on a subject that interests you, all while practising being an adult, can be truly invaluable. Money – and I say this as someone whose degree has roundly not paid off, at least fiscally – schmoney.

Certainly, when I trooped off to study English literature back in 2011, I was under no illusions that the degree would make me a wealthy woman. I just liked books, and relished the freedom to make copious stupid decisions within the relative safety of an institution. I learned so much at university: how to keep myself alive (just about), how to cohabit with people other than my family, never to mix red wine with vodka. Comparatively, seminars and lectures were a small part of my experience.

University fees tripled the year after I went, but I don’t know anyone younger who decided not to go because of the hike. Student debts have always felt pretty notional to both me and younger friends, with the interest snaffled off payslips before our earnings reach us, as though it was never there at all.

If you’re going to take student loans on, that’s my best advice for how to think of them, because as these new figures show, a degree is no guarantee that you’ll earn enough to pay them back. Bad luck for the Treasury, but then this was their idea once: abolish fees altogether, and you’ll find no one owes a penny.

Financially speaking, university clearly isn’t worth the cost – so if you weren’t keen in the first place, enjoy the vindication. Luckily for those who still fancy the experience, life has other metrics besides money.