Degree of advice

RECENT news that graduates face an average debt of around £30,000 will hopefully encourage school leavers to stop  and think – do I want to get  into this financial hole yet end up in a “McJob” with a pretendy degree in a pretendy  subject from a pretendy university?

University was a huge bargain when I left school in 1960 because only 5 per cent of the population became students, so the UK could afford to give us grants and, as all universities were “elite”, we walked into a job with no debts.

It’s not fair? Of course it’s not fair, but we had endured rationing and then spent our teen years growing up the bleak drabness of post-war Britain, so get over it!

You must research your  employment options before you leave school to see whether it would be better to go straight into the world of work, but if you do go up, get work  experience during your studies and prepare yourself thoroughly for today’s graduate job market.

(Dr) John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews