Degree, or not Degree, that is the question:

In my last post, I mentioned the owner of a car body repair shop.  In that piece, I implied that I had met him when we talked whereas, in fact, our conversation was only on the telephone.  His name given on the account details was so unusual and yet, to me, so memorable that I realised that he must be a man whom I had taught when he was aged 16, more than forty years ago.

As he is a real person I will not name him but will call him Peter Parchment.  I remember him as a very lively, small black boy who occasionally truanted and was often in trouble for minor misdemeanours. 

I rang him the next day partly to make sure that the money had gone through but mainly to confirm that he is who I thought he is.

“Do you come from Muswell Hill, Mr Parchment?

“No, Wood Green.”

“Did you go to Fortismere School or Creighton, as it was called earlier?”

“Yes, I did,” he exclaimed.  “Who are you?”

When I told him my name, he remembered me instantly.

“You were my Head of Year,” he said and  we agreed that it certainly was a very small world.

He told me that he had been at Creighton and had left aged 16 at the end of Year 11.  He was so switched off from school that he hadn’t ever found out his exam results.  To this day he has no idea how he did.

A week before term ended, he went to a garage in East Finchley and asked if they could give him a job working with cars.  Three years later, he was working for Ford in Dagenham and from there he went to Munich and spent five years working for BMW.

When he returned to England, fluent in German, he was married and able to buy his first house and set up his own business.  He lives in Harpenden now, has three sons and commutes to Milton Keynes three or four days a week.

I asked if his sons had gone to Fortismere.  They hadn’t and I got the impression that he was slightly embarrassed to tell me that they had all been privately educated.  Two of them work in the city and the other is a solicitor.

Peter has has been more successful than any of his teachers ever expected and in purely materialistic terms, has probably done better than any of them.

All that and no formal qualification of any kind from school, college or university.

I know one other person who has become materially very successful after choosing to opt out of further education.  Unlike Peter Parchment, he was academically able but after A’ levels, turned down university offers and went instead to work for BP.  In the three years his contemporaries were studying, he was progressing through the ranks of the company.

At the age of 21, he left BP and set himself up as an independent oil broker.  An oil broker is an intermediary who arranges and facilitates the buying and selling of physical oil cargos and oil derivatives.

He was so successful that when he bought his first Aston Martin, he avoided the three year waiting list by ordering it in Australia, then paying to ship it from Australia back to the UK.

In 1965, when I started at Durham University, only 5% of school leavers in the United Kingdom went to university.  In 2025, that figure is 33%.  In 1965, only about 6% of UK university graduates received a first class degree.  The percentage of firsts awarded now has risen to over 30%.  

Are  graduates brighter and working harder now than they were, or has the quality of teaching improved by a remarkable extent?  Neither of those scenarios is true as the cause of the apparent improvement is money and nothing else.

When my generation went to university, we received a means tested maintenance grant of £340 a year.  That was it.  The government paid the tuition fees.  The £340 was for food, lodging and spending money.  As it was means tested, I received £130 and my parents gave me £70 a term.  

Every Christmas, I worked for the Post Office delivering cards and mail.  Every summer, I worked at Birds Eye freezing peas but that work wasn’t strictly necessary or vital for me.  If I had been determinedly frugal (drank less beer), I could have managed on my annual grant without the need to work.

How different my experience was from that of today’s students.  Many of them find it essential to find work during term time as well as during the holidays.  The son of a friend of mine worked four evenings a week in a pub throughout his 3-year course but still managed to graduate with a first class degree.

The financial burden associated with university education in England starts at around £9,535 per year in tuition fees and that figure is now set to rise every year in line with inflation.  £9,535 is the annual fee whether the student is studying Contemporary Circus Performance at Bath Spa University or maths at Cambridge.

Added to tuition fees are housing, textbooks, and daily living costs.  This leads to student debts of a new graduate in England of £48,000 to £55,000.  Over 150,000 UK graduates currently have student debts exceeding £100,000.

Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland have lower average graduate debt, with Welsh graduates owing about £39,470; Northern Irish graduates about £28,000, and Scottish graduates typically owing around £17,000.  The figure for Scotland is low because the Scottish government pays the tuition fees for Scottish students. 

It has been estimated that half of graduates will never fully repay their student debt within 30 years.  For 30 years, most of those graduates make repayments of at least £50 a month.  

As their salary increases, the monthly sum does too.  Those who earn less than £25,000 a year, will never pay anything back but as the average national salary is now £29,600, that number is very small indeed.

Is  a degree worth it?

Attending university delays entry into the workforce and this results in lost potential income over at least three years. Those who start work, obtain apprenticeships, or join a business earlier, can gain experience and savings while their peers are still studying.

Just having a degree no longer guarantees employment or a well-paying job.  A third of UK graduates are overqualified for their roles.  In many industries, practical experience and skills are valued more highly than academic credentials.

There are jobs that demand a post graduate qualification in maths or physics.  Successful candidates will, in all likelihood, never apply the learning they have acquired over five years.  It’s the fact that they are intelligent enough to achieve a PhD in that subject, that shows they have the brain power and aptitude required for the position.

If I were recruiting for these posts, I would drop the PhD criterion and instead give candidates the “Blundeston Knot” test at the age of 18.  The Blundeston Knot is a knot joining two pieces of string that requires an extremely high IQ to begin to unravel it.

Successful candidates could avoid at least five years of study and save tens of thousands of pounds if they untie the knot.

Students often face stress from academic demands, financial worry, and expectation to succeed which can lead to mental health issues or burnout. Many also report struggling with motivation if they feel their course lacks direct relevance to their career goals and sadly, this is the case with many degree courses today.

Degree apprenticeships are becoming very popular and highly sought after.  The attraction is that some companies pay a salary while studying and upon graduation, a job is guaranteed.  I have read that an accountancy apprenticeship with KPMG, is tougher to obtain than a place at Cambridge.

If I were 18 now, I doubt that I would apply to university and if I did, it would certainly not be to read geography or any other humanities subject.  According to 2025 data from the Complete University Guide, the students with the weakest graduate job outcomes in the UK are largely those on arts and humanities courses.

People will argue that the experience of university life and the very act of learning is reward enough for the costs involved.   I accept that my three years at Durham were very enjoyable and rewarding and I made friends with whom I am still in close contact today.   Although I understand the causes of today’s more intense tropical storms, oxbow lakes, slickensides and roche moutonnées, is my quality of life better for having that knowledge?  No!

I have no idea what I would do instead.  I never had any kind of career guidance while I was at school.  I hope that is not the case today.

It is no wonder that degree grade-inflation has soared the way it has.  Universities have a duty to provide their customers - and that is what students are nowadays - with something that will, in all probability, cost them more than anything else they will ever buy - other than a house.

By the way, the Blundeston Knot doesn’t exist.  I imagined it but it would probably be good if it did though, wouldn’t it?