What do you think about university? A parent’s honest take on the college question
On a grey Friday evening in late October, my seventeen-year-old son Leo sat at the kitchen table with his laptop open to the Common App. He hadn’t typed anything in twenty minutes. His chin was resting on his fist, and he was staring at the “Extracurricular Activities” section like it was a math problem he’d already failed.
“Do you actually think this is worth it?” he asked.
Not “Will I get in?” or “Which school should I pick?” but a deeper question. The one I’d been dodging for months.
I poured myself a cup of tea and sat down across from him. The kitchen still smelled faintly of the chicken we’d had for dinner. The dishwasher hummed. It was such an ordinary moment for such a heavy question.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly? I’m not sure anymore.”
This wasn’t the answer I expected to give. For most of my life, I thought of university the way I thought of seatbelts: you just put it on. It’s what you do. My parents didn’t go, but they sacrificed so I could. I went. I studied English literature. I got a degree, then a job that didn’t require it, then a career that sort of did. It worked out fine.
But finishing my tea, watching Leo’s face in the blue light of the screen, I realized my experience wasn’t a useful blueprint. He’s seventeen in a world where the cost of tuition has more than doubled since I graduated. Where people get hired for coding bootcamps and portfolio projects. Where the phrase “underemployed graduate” shows up in every other news article.
This is the tension I think a lot of parents are living with right now. We grew up believing university was a necessary step. The path was linear: get in, get through, get a job. We were never taught to ask whether the line still goes where we think it does.
Leo’s situation isn’t simple. He’s a decent student — B’s, a few A’s in classes he cares about. He’s practical, likes working with his hands, spent last summer helping his uncle redo a bathroom floor and actually loved it. He talks about architecture sometimes, but also about electrician apprenticeships. He seems genuinely interested in both. The idea of college is this vague, expensive experiment, and he can’t see how four years of lectures connect to anything he wants to actually do.
I remember sitting in a lecture hall at eighteen, in a required course on Victorian literature. I was bored. I was tired. I had no idea why I was there except that everyone said I should be. And yet — I also remember the afternoon I sat in the library and a line from a George Eliot novel clicked something into place. It felt electric. That moment alone didn’t justify the cost of my degree, but it changed how I saw the world. You can’t put that on an application.
That’s the real problem, I think. University means so many different things at once that we’ve stopped being able to talk about it clearly.
For some kids, it’s a place to grow intellectually. For others, it’s career training. For many, it’s just a transition — a safe, structured bridge between living at home and being an adult. And sometimes it’s a very expensive version of waiting to figure out what you want to do.
Those are different purposes. They cost the same amount. And nowhere in the application process does anyone ask: “Which one are you here for?”
So what do we actually do with this? Over the past few months, I’ve landed on a few things that have felt more helpful than pushing Leo toward any particular answer.
First, we stopped treating the question as a single either/or. We made a list of what he actually wants from the next few years. Not what anyone else wants. We sat down with a blank page and wrote down things like: want to earn money, want to learn about building things, want to meet interesting people, nervous about debt, want to travel. No judgement, just a list. Then we looked at what options exist for each desire. This gave us a real picture of how he feels, without the pressure of calling it a “future plan.”
Second, we changed the way we ask about schools. Instead of “Where do you want to go?” we started asking “What would a good Tuesday look like?” Because that’s what a university really is — a Tuesday. A routine. Classes, meals, hanging out. If the Tuesday doesn’t sound good, the prestige doesn’t matter. This helped Leo think concretely about what kind of environment he operates best in, whether that’s a big campus or a smaller one, close to home or far away.
Third, we talked about unhitching the degree from the job for a minute. I showed him my own story, and the stories of friends of mine. Some of us work in unrelated fields. Some of us in related ones. Almost all of us use skills we learned outside our major — writing clearly, thinking critically, managing time. A degree doesn’t guarantee a job, but for certain careers, it’s still the door you walk through. I told him to ask which of those careers actually interest him before he writes off the whole idea.
Fourth, and this has been the hardest one for me: we’re not forcing an answer. I told Leo he doesn’t have to decide this week, this month, or even this year. That’s a privilege he might not realise he has, and it’s true. Gap years exist. Apprenticeships exist. Community college exists. Starting university later is completely possible. I see parents who look at a deferred year like it’s the edge of a cliff; I’m learning to see it as just another road.
Last week, Leo came downstairs at midnight with his laptop. He’d found a two-year architecture technology program at a provincial college, plus a university pathway option if he wants it later. He looked almost relaxed. “Did you know this was a thing?” he asked. I didn’t.
We still don’t know what he’ll do. His applications are half-filled. We have more conversations ahead of us. I suspect the anxiety isn’t going anywhere — it’s just becoming something we talk about openly instead of something that sits unspoken under the surface.
University is what it is. A chunk of time with a chance to learn, to meet people, to get credentials. It’s not the only path anymore, but it’s not obsolete either. What we’re learning is that the question isn’t “university or not.” It’s “what does this specific person need right now, and what can we actually offer?”
I don’t know if we’ll find a perfect answer. But I think we’re asking the right questions now. That feels like progress.
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