What Is the Point of University, Anyway? Advice for Parents of Teens
The garage still smelled like leftover graduation cake and the old lawnmower that’s been broken since spring when my 17-year-old son dropped a crumpled stack of math worksheets on the concrete floor and leaned back against his empty high school locker. “What’s the actual point of me going to university, anyway?” he said, not looking at me. “Jake dropped out last year and he’s making $25 an hour fixing jet skis on the lake. That’s more than our high school biology teacher makes.”
I wiped grease off my hands from tightening the handle on his new mountain bike and didn’t answer right away. I’d been dreading this question, because I didn’t have the neat answer my parents gave me when I was his age. They just said “it’s what you do after high school” and that was that, no further discussion. I suggested we drive down to the 24-hour diner on the edge of town for breakfast, the one with blue vinyl booths that stick to your jeans if you’re wearing shorts. We got pancakes with too much syrup, and I started talking through what I actually thought, not the generic stuff you see in graduation speeches or on social media.
I told him I don’t buy the two extremes everyone argues about online: one side says university is the only path to a good life, the other says it’s all a scam designed to steal your money. Both are wrong, and which one is right for you depends entirely on what you actually want to do.
I talked about my cousin Matt, who’s an electrician and never went to university. He bought his first house at 24, takes his wife and two kids camping every summer, and has never had a student loan payment. That works for him: he likes working with his hands, likes being done with work at 4 p.m. every day and not thinking about it after he clocks out. Then I talked about my friend Lisa’s daughter, who went to university for nursing, now works at the local hospital, makes solid money that let her help her mom through cancer treatment two years ago. She couldn’t do that job without the degree, there’s no way around the licensing requirements.
I told him what I got out of university that I didn’t expect when I was 18. I moved three hours away from home into a dorm, and for the first time, no one told me when to go to bed, no one reminded me to do my laundry, and I had to figure out how to talk my way out of a registration mistake that would have made me miss a required class. I changed my major twice, because I realized I hated chemistry (which I’d convinced myself I wanted to study) and actually loved reading and writing history. I wouldn’t have figured that out if I’d stayed home working full-time at the local grocery store right after high school, not because it was impossible, but because I was too busy working 40 hours a week just to pay rent to have space to mess around and try new things.
But I also told him that experience isn’t unique to university. You can get that same room to grow doing a gap year working and traveling, or doing an apprenticeship that moves you around different projects and teaches you to solve problems on your own. University isn’t the only way to grow up, and it’s never just a box you have to check.
After we finished our pancakes, I told him what we’d already started doing to figure this out for him, something any family can do. First, we wrote down three things he says he actually wants out of work: he wants to be outside most days, he wants to help fix damaged natural areas, and he wants to make enough money to afford a small house and go camping a couple times a year, no fancy stuff required. Second, we found two local guys who do exactly that kind of work—one works for the state park service, the other runs a small ecological restoration company—and my son called both of them to ask what qualifications you actually need to get that job. Both said any full-time permanent position with benefits requires a bachelor’s degree in environmental science or a related field; a two-year certification gets you entry-level labor, but you can’t move up without the four-year degree. That answer came from people actually doing the work, not from me or his guidance counselor.
Third, we sat down and ran the numbers. We have $30,000 in savings for him from birthday checks and family gifts over the years, that covers three years of tuition at our in-state public university. The fourth year he can work 10 hours a week on campus doing trail maintenance for the biology department (they already told him they have a spot open) and take out a small federal loan. Total debt when he graduates will be under $10,000, which is manageable even if he starts out making less than we expect. If the numbers didn’t add up that way, we’d be looking at other options. There’s no sense starting adult life crushed by six figures of debt just to check the university box.
Last week, my son spent three days pulling invasive garlic mustard with the local land trust. He came home covered in mud, sunburned across the nose, and talked through the whole dinner about how they’re turning an old corn field back into a native prairie, how 10 years from now people will be able to see wildflowers there that haven’t grown in our county for 100 years. He still complains about filling out FAFSA forms, he still says sometimes he’d rather just stay home and work full time for the land trust this year instead of going to classes. I don’t tell him he’s wrong, or that he has to go no matter what. We’re still figuring it out, and that’s okay. The point of university isn’t to be a one-size-fits-all answer for every 18-year-old. It’s just one option, and it’s up to us to figure out if it’s the right one for our kid.
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