Words: Gemma Sawyer (she/her)
My friend Becca and I had been talking about how little university work we thought we did in comparison to how busy we were doing other things (themed parties were among many other side quests), when she said something that remains one of my favourite quotes to ever come from a friend – ‘I feel like I’m doing life with a side of uni’. This perfectly summed up our university life so far, and we joked about how our social lives often take precedence over our academics. But on a deeper level, it got me thinking about the role my degree plays in my life now, and what role it will play after I graduate (a terrifying thought). With our academics sometimes thrown into the dark so that our social lives can prevail, coupled with poor prospects of finding graduate work after a degree, why do we still go to university?
The prospect of unemployment after university is not a negligible matter. It is no secret that finding a graduate job is a tough struggle and that many students end up working jobs with no correlation to their degrees. In its 2024/2025 report on graduate employment, Prospects found that for students who graduated in 2021/22, only 59% had found full time work 15 months on from graduation and in 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics, only 60.4% of graduates were in what it deemed ‘high-skilled employment’. Many graduates cannot afford to live in their university city after their degree and have to move back home while hunting for jobs. These statistics illustrate a bleak future for students – so what else can we gain from university?
I believe that there are numerous non-academic reasons why university is such a valuable experience. The friendships I have been able to forge and the people I have met at university have been nothing short of amazing. I live for my social life in Glasgow. There was never a dull moment in accommodation during first year – themed parties for every birthday, day trips to random locations in and around Glasgow, big dinners for special occasions, and the company of everyone around you. This sense of belonging and enthusiasm purely to see one another is something I will never take for granted, though it was completely unrelated to our degrees. The neverending rotation of social activities ensured that our social lives were never sidelined, even in the depths of exam season.
For many students, including myself, university is our first shot at independence. Moving out, meeting and living with new people, managing deadlines away from home, budgeting, food shopping, flat hunting, paying bills – I would have never done any of these if I had not gone to university. Already, in less than 2 years since moving away from home my confidence in my own abilities has skyrocketed. I have developed in ways that would be much harder had I not moved out for university. The life skills I have gained from university so far have been incredibly beneficial and they are important lessons I will definitely take forward in my life.
This is not to say that my degree means nothing to me. I study German and Politics, and nothing makes me happier than witnessing my progress grow in both of these subject areas. I actively enjoy learning in these 2 areas, and in my third year I will be going abroad to Germany to improve my language skills in the hope of one day attaining fluency. I am dedicated to my degree, yet there is so much more to my life in Glasgow than lectures, writing essays, or revising my German adjective endings for the millionth time. When friends and family back home ask me about university, the first thing that springs to mind is not my course, level 10 in the library, or the Boyd Orr Building (strangely enough). Often it feels like other aspects of university life mean more to myself and my friends than our subjects do. I’ve certainly found the friendships I’ve cultivated at university to be its most defining feature.
University is not worthless; it offers a plethora of opportunities for students, both academic and non-academic. Despite possible joblessness after the hard work of a degree, students nevertheless choose to go to university, showing that there is something more that we gain from this experience. Academics shouldn’t be portrayed as the only valuable takeaway from university – everything in between, overshadowed, overlooked has its own value too.
Bibliography:
1 https://luminate.prospects.ac.uk/what-do-graduates-do
2 https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/graduate-labour-markets
3 https://www.theguardian.com/money/article/2024/aug/29/uk-graduates-struggle-job-market
