Why going to university is still worthwhile - despite the student loans - video Dailymotion

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00:00Hello I'm Amber Allitt and I am the education writer for the National World

00:04News websites. So there's been a fair bit of talk about student loans this week

00:08after some data from the BBC revealed that nearly 1.8 million people in the UK

00:13owe more than £50,000 in student loan debt. Well I've got some pretty hefty

00:18student loans myself so I thought I would share why I think that university

00:23is still a worthwhile venture. I studied back in New Zealand first of all and I

00:28have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. So with some extra added on for

00:33living expenses and course related costs I accumulated about 50,000 New Zealand

00:38dollars in student loan debt or about 24,000 pounds over here and it has also

00:43been accumulating interest since I've been in the UK. So I went to university

00:49when I was 17. I had pretty good grades at school and I thought maybe I wanted to

00:54be a psychologist but being 17 I really had no idea. I hadn't had a lot of

01:01exposure to that sort of thing so when I went along to university I studied a

01:07psychology degree and I had a study towards a minor in sociology. That gave

01:13me a lot of leeway to take you know a lot of different papers. I ended up

01:17taking everything from gender studies to plant biotechnology papers for example

01:21and at the same time you know take part in extracurriculars. So throughout the

01:27course of that I ended up volunteering at a student magazine and there I got

01:31the chance to work on some really amazing, some really creative, fun,

01:35impactful stories that put me on to journalism. It was a really obvious fit

01:40and hindsight but it was something I'd never considered before that if I

01:44hadn't had that opportunity. I changed my degree halfway through, yes that adds a

01:49bit more to the student loan, but it allowed me to get into a postgraduate

01:55course, a more specialized second degree that ended up introducing me to a lot of

02:00important players working in the field and it's meant that I've actually been

02:04able to get a job and onto a career pathway where I've been able to repay

02:09nearly half of that student loan in just five years of working. You leave

02:13secondary school so young and you don't necessarily know what you want to do

02:19with your life. It's almost unfair to expect that from people at that stage in

02:24their lives and university is really about the discovery, you know, through no

02:29matter what you study you'll end up getting these crucial critical thinking

02:33comprehension skills that really allow you to find something that you really

02:38love doing, maybe shopping around a bit, maybe experimenting, but once you find

02:43that you can excel, you can make the connections in the industry that you

02:47want to be in, you will meet friends for life, maybe people who will end up being

02:52your co-workers working in the same field as you one day and I just think

02:57that really those skills and those connections that you make just cannot be

03:02overstated at such an early point in your life. So that for me is why I feel

03:08like going to university, no matter how much of a student loan you end up

03:12racking up, is really something that shouldn't be missed.