I regret going to university – I’m £24,000 in debt with a degree I don’t need

Is it worth going to university? That’s the question that many young people are questioning as student debts become increasingly unaffordable and the job market tougher.

Eleanor Wells graduated in 2020 with a degree in graphic design and communications but after years of part-time jobs – and £24,000 in debt – she now works in a completely different field and regrets even going.

After part-time jobs at a coffee shop and a gym, she now works at a facial aesthetics clinic in a role she feels she “can happily do for the next 40 years”.

“I don’t think everybody needs to go to uni,” she told The i Paper, adding that apprenticeships are a better way to prepare young people for the workforce, “but apprenticeships are scarce”.

University was ‘the only choice’

Wells said her sixth-form college made her feel that university was the “only choice”.

“There was this almost political impression, I feel, that university was the only way that you could actually make a good career,” she said.

She wishes someone had told her aged 16 to “do what would make you happy” or “something like beauty therapy or even nursing” instead of A-levels and university.

“Around 2010 to 2015 when I was in secondary school, there was this stigma around doing hairdressing, aesthetics or anything like that,” she said. “It was like, ‘Oh, you can’t do anything else in life’.”

Wells started her job as a patient care consultant two months ago. Once she passes her probation, she will have to train for another three years before she is fully qualified to carry out treatments.

‘No preparation for the real world’

A British Social Attitudes survey published this week found that 34 per cent of people think a university degree isn’t worth the amount of time or money it takes to gain it, up from 14 per cent in 2005.

The survey, which was carried out in 2025, also found that among graduates, 27 per cent feel their degrees weren’t worth it.

“When you go to uni, you’re given, for a lot of students, [the] largest amount of money ever in terms of your maintenance loan”, Wells said.

“You don’t get taught about structure of your working day. My course was two days a week.”

“You go from living your life doing whatever you want, whenever you want, staying up however late you want… and then you have to go into the real world and start managing your life and other people’s expectations of you,” she added.

Wells, 27, thinks all university courses should have a placement year in industry to prepare students for “real life” and help them get jobs when they leave.

There’s a “big gap” between academia and the working world, she said. “There are graduates who can’t get employment because employers say, ‘You don’t have experience’.”

Placement years would also give students the opportunity to make connections that could lead to jobs later on, Wells said.

“All of the jobs I’ve got are through knowing people, or just people seeing what I’ve done, and then offering me a job,” she said.

Not worth the money

Apart from the tough job market and the dwindling of the “graduate premium” – how much more graduates earn than their non-university-educated peers – there’s also the factor of mounting student debt, making graduates question if their degrees were worth the cost.

Just 17 per cent of people said degrees are a “good value for money”, this week’s survey found.

Wells’s parents were able to cover her tuition, but even the £4,000 a year she received in maintenance has left her with £24,000 in debt now that the interest has accrued.

Wells also doesn’t feel that her university course was worth the £9,250 a year her parents spent.
“It’s definitely not worth £10,000, I don’t think university should ever be that high for anybody,” she said.

“My sister’s friend has £86,000 of debt for nursing. That’s something where you’re helping people. She works for the NHS now, and realistically, she’s never going to be able to pay that back,” she said. “Why are we penalising people?”