Why university is still worth it for Christian parents and young people

As A Level results approach, Andrew Boakye believes that Christian parents can help their children see university as a place to grow in wisdom, resilience and faith, not just a route to a job

I am the product of a parenting culture that followed the basic pattern of: finish school, go to university and get a job. It was tried, trusted, predictable and safe. It was a culture that treated university education as the most significant form of social capital to which a school leaver could meaningfully aspire.

It scarcely needs saying that the landscape has changed. If a young person can have a career “influencing” on social media, then university would seem like three wasted and irretrievable years. If, however, we dare to honestly survey how the landscape has changed, it becomes clear in my mind that the experience of university is more crucial than ever – even if it is for quite different reasons than the ones my mother and father proverbially rammed down my throat!

I would never advise you to send your child to university just to get a degree

The writer of Ecclesiastes intuitively put their finger on the underlying issue: I again saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift and the battle is not to the warriors, and neither is bread to the wise nor wealth to the discerning, nor favour to the skilful; for time and chance overtake them all (Ecclesiastes 9:11). The algorithm has stalled; former certainties have evaporated; fresh insight is required.

The predictability, safety, and security that once accompanied that most sacred highway from school to university to employment is, for all serious intents and purposes, non-existent. Our world has never been a less predictable, less secure, more economically nebulous and more confusing context for 18-year-olds to decide their life trajectory than it is now. What we read in Ecclesiastes is ……