Universal University

Oxford University occasionally holds “open days” for potential undergraduate students. These days give English secondary school (“college” or “sixth form”) students the chance to see what a day in the life of an Oxford University student is like. The most celebrated of these open days are “access days,” days to encourage students from underrepresented schools to apply to the university. So today, volunteering for a group of teenagers from East London, I was surprised to hear a young woman with the honesty to admit, “I’m not really sure I’m going to uni.”

As it turns out, this young woman has no real idea what she wants to do with her life. She enjoys English and history in schools, but isn’t really sure that she wants to spend the rest of her life on either of these subjects. Instead, she’s thinking of spending at least a year working, travelling to her family home in South America, and taking the time to put serious thought into her vocation. Although it’s an unpopular sentiment for a teenager capable of earning a college degree to express, her uncertainty about university makes perfect sense.

It is easy to forget that the modern university system is exactly that—modern. Traditionally, only those who wanted to go into a field requiring an advanced degree did so: lawyers, doctors, clergy. Even fewer pursued “purely academic” subjects like English or history—those who wanted to teach or research. Everyone else left school and learned a trade. Accountants learned accountancy in a firm, not in a classroom. Clerks started at the bottom and worked their way up, gaining experience as they went.

That system had its perks. It reworded hard work with promotions and bonuses. It promoted company loyalty which, in the long term, encouraged employers to treat their employees with greater respect, as a valuable part of their organization. And it provided people with the means to continue learning on the job. No one really believes that a recent graduate with a degree in finance knows more about business than the man who now works under him who has had the job for twenty years.

So who is to tell the fifteen-year-old girl that she has to go to university? I applaud her responsible, self-knowledgeable decision to take time to find out what it is she really wants to do. I only wish that Western society hadn’t made life without a university degree so difficult for anyone with her level of common sense.

Certainly, there is much to be said for a university education. Knowledge of the liberal arts remains our path to cultural fluency, a part of our political existence as human beings. Many of the obstacles for women, minorities, and people from lower-class economic backgrounds can be surmounted by a university education in a way they once could not—provided those groups have access to a university education. But there is a limit to what one can learn in a classroom. We ought to seriously consider whether so many are best served by spending another three to five years in formal education, or whether they might not be better off finding themselves outside of academia. I sincerely wish the young woman luck as she bravely bucks the system and finds her own path in life.