We were stopped at a red light when my son put down his phone and said, “I don’t think I want to go to university.”
It wasn’t the kind of dramatic declaration I’d braced for, not after months of him quietly going quiet every time an aunt asked about applications. It was flatter than that, more like a fact that had settled inside him. The light turned green. I said, “Okay.” Then, because I’m a parent who has sat in enough school meetings to know when not to push, I said nothing else for about three minutes.
He’s sixteen. For context, that’s an age where most of his friends are already talking about Ucas personal statements like they’re writing obituaries for their childhoods. His older sister had always known she wanted to go. She packed her bags at eighteen, hung a string of fairy lights over her dorm window, and never once looked back. He is not her. He never has been.
I’ve spent the past decade teaching English at a large comprehensive school, and I’ve watched the question “What do you think about university?” get asked in a hundred different ways. Sometimes it comes from a Year 9 kid who can barely sit still. Sometimes it comes from a Year 13 student who’s already got three offers but suddenly isn’t sure. Most of the time, it isn’t really a question about university at all. It’s a question about whether they’re doing this whole life thing right.
So when my son said it, I knew enough not to jump in with stats about lifetime earnings or the social value of a degree. I knew enough to let the car fill with the sound of the indicator until we pulled into our road.
He used to love making models, the tiny plastic ones you have to clip off a sprue and sand down. He’d spend an hour on a single piece, just getting it clean. That’s how I think about university, actually. It’s less about the final qualification and more about the slow sanding down of the edges of yourself. You go, you live in a hallway with four strangers, you argue about the bins, you stay up too late, you miss a deadline and survive it. You learn that your own parents are not the only adults in the world worth listening to.
But I didn’t say any of that to him at the kitchen table. Instead, I asked what he’d want to do instead, thinking he’d say something about an apprenticeship or a coding bootcamp. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Just get a job, probably.”
There was a time I’d have heard that as laziness. I’ve been a form tutor long enough to know how easy it is to slot a pupil into a neat box: disengaged, underachieving, potential-wise. But this kid had just sat with me for twenty minutes telling me about a film he’d watched, something about a man rebuilding a boat in his front yard. He wasn’t lazy. He was tired. Tired of being asked to perform a future he hadn’t chosen yet.
Here’s something I’ve learned, both as a parent and in the classroom: when a teenager says “I don’t know,” they often mean “I haven’t told you the real reason yet.” And the real reason isn’t always rational. It might be that he’s embarrassed about his predicted grades. It might be that he’s worried about making friends. It might be that the idea of taking out a loan for something he isn’t even sure he wants feels like a trap. All of those are legitimate. None of them are easily solved by a pros-and-cons list.
I said, “You don’t have to decide this week.” He looked at me like I’d just offered him a cup of tea in the middle of a fire. “But everyone’s deciding now,” he said. That’s the pressure. The machine of sixth form life keeps turning, and if you don’t get on the conveyor belt by October, you’re off the belt forever. Except you’re not. I know this because I’ve seen students drop out after their first year, take a gap year to work in a cafe, discover an interest in physiotherapy at twenty-two, and go to uni at twenty-five. I’ve seen apprentices end up in project management. I’ve seen a girl who left school at sixteen with a Saturday job at a dog groomer end up running her own business by twenty-one.
University is a good option. It’s a fine option for a lot of people. But the way we talk about it at school and around family tables, you’d think it was the only door left in a burning building. It isn’t. The trick, I’ve realised, isn’t to convince kids that university is the right thing. It’s to help them figure out what they actually want from the next few years, and then work backwards.
So the other week, I tried something with my son. I didn’t ask about courses or careers. I asked what his ideal day looks like in five years. Does he want to be reading a lot? Does he want to be working with his hands? Does he want to be outside? Does he want to be around people or mostly alone? We sat with the question for a bit. He said he wouldn’t mind working in a shop, actually, because he likes talking to strangers. He laughs at that, and I reminded him he always spends ages chatting with the Post Office staff.
It’s not a plan. But it’s a start. It gives us a small, real thing to build on, rather than the abstract fear of “not going to university.”
I’m not saying parents should just let go and trust everything to unfold. I’m saying that the pressure we put on this one decision often stalls the very thinking we want to encourage. When my son says “I don’t know,” what he needs is not another set of reasons why he should know. He needs space to admit that he doesn’t. He needs someone to say, “Good. That’s honest. Let’s find out what you’re curious about.”
The other day, he came home with a leaflet for a local engineering apprenticeship. He didn’t say much, just left it on the kitchen counter next to the cereal. I picked it up and read it. It had a starting salary and a qualification at level 4. I put it back down and didn’t say a word. The next morning, the leaflet had gone.
I don’t know if he’ll apply. I don’t know if he’ll end up at university after all. He’s got a year and a half to change his mind a dozen times. And that’s fine. The conversation we had in the car wasn’t the end of anything. It was just a break in the road, a moment to pull over and look at the map again.
What do I think about university? I think it’s a lovely city I’ve sent a lot of young people to. Some of them stay, some of them come home, and some of them realise halfway there that they wanted to take the train in a different direction. That’s not a failure. That’s just a journey with a longer layover.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » We were stopped at a red light when my son put down his phone and said, “I don’t think I want to go to university