Essays

Has University Monopolised the Chance for Young People To Have a Social Life?

And how will it influence the future of our children?

Being social when you’re young is easy.

You’re plopped into school and surrounded by a bunch of people that you spend most of the day with.

Being around many people your age in a hypersocial environment is the norm when you’re a teen. You might not get on with most people, but you get a real good chance to find some people to form a clique with.

It’s essentially free real estate for forming friendships.

Well, until school finishes, that is.

Post-school social limitations

After school finishes there is little opportunity for socialisation.

Unless you keep in contact with people from school or have a large family you’re unlikely to find yourself in a social environment often.

Before the age of the internet and social media, this wasn’t an issue: people were chronically outside, as opposed to people now being chronically online and stuck inside.

You’d go and meet up with people in your local community because, well, there was little else to do.

But now a sense of community no longer exists. The amount of time we spend physically interacting with people has significantly reduced over time, making it increasingly more difficult to meet new people.

When we leave school, all social interactions take a massive 180.

In school, we spend most of our days crowded around familiar faces in classrooms and playgrounds.

When we leave, we’re greeted with a sudden solitude; we’ve left everyone else behind and replaced them all with a silencing reality.

To make things worse, we’ve also replaced tangible human interactions with strings of pixelated text and emojis.

And it isn’t quite cutting it.

University is being sold as a social saviour

University is the last time you can be unapologetically social.

Unless you get a social job (most of which are now becoming remote) or join a sports team, you’re unlikely to be surrounded by people with similar interests that are your age ever again.

And colleagues aren’t always easy to make friends with.

You can go to events and join clubs to interact with people, but I find events are usually too infrequent to be classified as an environment to make lasting friendships.

So now, if you want to network and make friends with people when you’re mature, your best bet is university.

It is represented as a saving grace for people who are feeling lonely or are afraid of feeling lonely.

You’re pushed into choosing between going into substantial debt to stave off loneliness (with the possibility of getting a job at the end), or going into the workforce and being abruptly alone.

Succinctly put: go to university and get in debt, or isolate yourself.

Quite the dilemma.

The commodification of socialisation

University has a pretty bad rep right now.

More and more people are starting to believe that university is a waste of time and money that promises you debt, a certificate, alcoholism, caffeine dependence… but not a job.

What a deal.

With the introduction of high-level apprenticeships and cheap online courses, university is no longer associated with the superior way of getting a job and making mad moola.

University has pivoted towards capitalising on the rise in loneliness, social media and the reduction in real-life interactions people are experiencing.

It offers one of the only adolescent chances you’ll have to interact with a plethora of people your age, among other things:

• It is the last chance to be reckless and stupid — binge-drink, sleep around and slack off — yet still receive praise.
• It is the last chance where you’ll be placed among many people to bond with without having to put in much work.
• You get to delay the inevitable (reality) and pretend to be a kid for a little longer.

Socialising in the online age is hard. University is sold as a cure.

More importantly, it is sold as one of the only cures. It has commodified mass tangible socialisation.

And this FOMO is becoming a stronger drive for people to choose university than achieving success in a desired field.

But is this glamorisation warranted?

Does the “uni experience” live up to expectations?

University is a modern-day fairytale

People set super high expectations for university.

They expect university to be this fantastical experience where you make a bunch of friends, drink to excess, party every night, experience amazing independence and sleep around without consequences.

Sounds like a dream!

What they fail to account for is reality, not the fantasy that university is portrayed as.

Universities failing to match expectations is becoming greater and greater.

The secret to happiness is to lower your expectations… if your expectations and standards are very high and only allow yourself to be happy went things are exquisite, you’ll never be happy and grateful

— Charlie Munger

The problem is: that going to university doesn’t guarantee anything.

University doesn’t ensure you’ll have friends, girlfriends, fun, parties, socialisation, easy living and inevitable joy.

It is marketed like this. Universities act like a business so you buy their product. They have to make money somehow. If selling you a dream is how they need to get it, so be it.

The negative consequence is people setting unrealistic expectations. This directly correlates with how likely people are to be satisfied.

There are countless examples of people online who explain how universities failed to meet any expectations. It’s difficult to not find people saying how badly they want to leave university.

In some cases, it has:

• Made them more depressed;
• Made them more lonely;
• Ruined their life.

Putting the university experience on a pedestal only sets you up for disappointment.

And disappointment with universities continues to get worse. Whether this is a result of unrealistic expectations that continue to grow or a declining quality of experience… I’m not sure.

Perhaps it’s both.

Either way, going to university is an expensive short-term solution for a problem that it doesn’t guarantee to fix.

Be careful that your urge to go to university isn’t a longing for a social life you struggle to find elsewhere.

Otherwise, you’re playing a costly and risky game.

Is university all bad?

University unquestionably can offer you amazing things.

A chance to further your education and skills in an area that requires a degree to progress makes university more than worth it.

Additionally, they offer a multitude of clubs, societies and opportunities for you to sink your teeth into and gain experience with. This, however, is on you to make the most out of. No other environment comes close to providing the amount of unique and diverse opportunities that a university does.

University can be as good as you let it be.

There is also a chance that you will meet some amazing people that you’ll potentially spend the rest of your life with. But would you put a price of £9,250 per year on a friendship?

That’s an expensive arrangement!

The chance it gives you to increase your earning potential (and ego size) can be worth it, given that it is for something you’re interested in and likely to be employed for.

Moving out of home and learning to become your own person can be a huge benefit.

Learning what it is like to take care of yourself, cook, clean, do laundry, manage time and much more without the direct influence of parents is invaluable for gaining maturity.

Conclusion

Is university worth it?

Maybe.

If you intend to go for the sole reason of avoiding loneliness and becoming isolated, it is more than likely a mistake.

If you expect it to be this amazing experience that you have pedestalized, take some time to reconsider the reality of what life will be like.

However, if you’re going to get a solid education and obtain a much-needed degree, university can be a great way to secure a high-paying job.

Plus, you don’t need to go to university to socialise. It just makes it a hell of a lot easier.

You can pick up a hobby, volunteer, find travel groups, attend church, play a sport, etc.

Although it’s difficult, it isn’t impossible, and it's certainly worth trying.

Going to university promises everything and guarantees nothing.

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