Why University Isn’t the Only Answer: What I Want My Daughter to Know
The question came on a Tuesday afternoon, in the car, on the way home from school. My daughter had her forehead against the window, watching the same streets she’d seen a thousand times.
“Do you think I should go to university?”
I adjusted the rearview mirror, signaled, waited for a gap. “I don’t know,” I said. “Do you want to?”
“That’s not helpful,” she said, but she smiled a little. “Everyone talks about it like it’s the only thing that matters. But also like it’s a trap. I don’t know what I think.”
I knew the feeling. I still remember sitting at my own kitchen table at seventeen, holding an offer letter from a university I’d chosen because my maths teacher said it had good connections. I didn’t really know what I wanted to study. I picked politics because I’d got a B in history and it sounded serious. Nobody asked me if I liked politics. I barely knew what it was.
Now, twenty years later, I’ve seen both sides. I’ve hired people with degrees and people without. I’ve watched friends spend five years on a PhD only to leave academia entirely. I’ve watched others skip university, train as electricians or graphic designers, and build careers that look nothing like the path we were all told to follow.
The truth is, I no longer think about university the way I used to. I don’t think it’s a reward. I don’t think it’s a safety net. I don’t think it’s something every eighteen-year-old should do just because the school calendar leaves a gap between June and September.
I think university is a tool. A big, expensive, sometimes wonderful tool. But a tool, not a verdict on your worth.
That shift didn’t happen quickly. It happened through watching my own daughter and trying to answer her questions honestly. When she first mentioned applying, I felt that familiar parental tug—the one that says, “She should get a degree, it’s safer.” But safe for whom? And safe from what?
I started asking her different questions instead of giving her my opinions.
What do you want your weekdays to look like when you’re twenty-one? Do you want to be in a lecture hall, a workshop, a lab, a kitchen, a classroom? Does the idea of reading and writing essays fill you with interest or dread? Why?
Some of those questions she could answer. Some she couldn’t. That was fine. The point wasn’t to decide her future in one conversation. The point was to show her that university is a choice about how to spend your time, not a destiny.
We also talked about money. Not in a dramatic way, but in a practical one. A degree doesn’t guarantee a job. It doesn’t guarantee a salary. It does guarantee a bill, if you take out loans. That bill can be worth it, but only if you get something meaningful from the experience—skills, connections, confidence, or a subject you genuinely want to study.
I told her what I wish someone had told me: if you go to university, go for the work itself. Not for the idea of being a student. Not because your friends are going. Not because teachers or relatives keep asking what your “plan” is.
Choose a subject you want to spend three years thinking about. Not one you picked because it sounds impressive at a dinner party.
Last month, we went to an open day at one of the universities she’s considering. She walked around the campus, looked at the library, sat in on a psychology taster lecture. She said it felt “fine.” Not excited, just fine. We didn’t push. We bought a coffee, walked back to the car, and on the way home she said maybe she’d rather do a photography course at the local college first, get practical, then decide.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s a plan too.”
I meant it. It took me a while to get to that “okay.” There’s a strong pull to see university as the default, the thing every sensible family aims for. But the more I talk to other parents, the more I hear the same quiet worry: what if it’s not right for my child? What if we push them into something expensive and they hate it?
That fear is real, but it doesn’t have to lead to pressure. It can lead to better conversations.
At home, I made one small change that mattered: I stopped saying “when you go to university” and started saying “if you decide to go.” That one word changed the atmosphere. It made room for other possibilities. It told my daughter that her path wasn’t already written.
We started looking at alternatives together. Apprenticeships. College courses. Work experience. A gap year spent working and saving, then applying later. There’s no single timeline. University will still exist when she’s twenty, or twenty-five, or thirty. It’s not going anywhere.
I’m not saying university is a bad choice. It can be a great one. For some people, it’s exactly the right environment. It gives structure, time, and access to ideas you don’t get elsewhere. Some of the most thoughtful, curious people I know are academics. Some of the most practical, inventive people I know never stepped foot in a lecture hall. Both groups are doing fine.
What I want for my daughter is simple: I want her to make a decision she can live with. I want her to understand that there is no perfect answer. There is only a series of trade-offs.
So when she asks me what I think about university, I don’t give her a speech. I tell her what I’ve learned. University is not the only answer. It’s one answer, among many. It works if you work it. It fails if you’re there for the wrong reasons. And you can always change your mind.
She hasn’t decided yet. Maybe she’ll apply this autumn. Maybe she won’t. We’re still talking about it, in the car, at the kitchen table, between ordinary days. That’s the real work, I think. Not picking the right future, but staying curious about it together.
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