University Decision Starter

How to use it

Set aside an hour with the phone face down. Print it if you can. Students and parents complete their reflection sections separately, then compare — when a family fills this in together, one voice usually wins.

1. What are you actually buying?

A degree is sold as one product and is really a bundle: knowledge, a credential, three structured years, a social network, a first move away from home, and access to a graduate recruitment pipeline. Some parts of that bundle can be bought separately, and more cheaply. Name the parts you actually want.

1. List everything you expect to get from the three years, in your own words.
2. Rank those items. Which two matter most, and which could you lose without regret?
3. For each of your top two: is university the only route to it, or the most familiar one?
4. Which item is doing the most work in your answer — and would you still go if it were removed?

2. Go, not yet, or alternative

Three live options. Each has to be argued for, not eliminated by default. 'Not yet' with a defensible plan is a stronger position than an on-time start to a course chosen by exhaustion.

1. Go: write the strongest one-paragraph case for starting this September.
2. Not yet: what would you do with the year, and what would it need to produce to count as a success?
3. Alternative: name a specific apprenticeship, employer, training route or project — with the same detail you would give a course.
4. Which of the three did you find hardest to write? What does that tell you?

3. The real cost

Not the headline fee. Write the numbers on one page and look at them together. This does not automatically argue against going; it argues against going for a course nobody can justify.

1. Tuition and maintenance borrowing over the full course, as a single total.
2. How repayment actually works for you — threshold, rate, and how long you expect to be repaying.
3. Earnings foregone: what could you plausibly earn during those years on the alternative route?
4. The cost of the option you are not taking. What does saying yes here close off?

4. AI and career uncertainty

Two easy positions to avoid: 'AI changes nothing' and 'degrees are now worthless'. Anyone offering a confident ten-year forecast of graduate employment is selling something. Ask the narrower, answerable question instead.

1. In the work this course leads to, what depends on judgement, human relationships, physical presence or regulated professional standing?
2. What in it is routine information handling that software already does well?
3. If the routine part shrank by half, what would remain — and would you still want it?
4. What could you learn alongside the course that is hardest to automate?

5. Course and university evidence checks

Named, specific, checkable things. This is where enthusiasm meets evidence, and where a first choice sometimes quietly becomes a second choice.

1. Timetabled contact hours per week, and how they are split between lectures, seminars and supervised practice.
2. How you are assessed, and how much of the final result rests on each method.
3. Who actually teaches the first year, and how much of it is taught by permanent staff.
4. Graduate destination data for this specific course — not the institution average.
5. Write down the direct question you asked the department, and the answer you got.

The next defensible step

Not a life plan. One step you could defend out loud to a sceptical, fair-minded adult, with a date attached and a named way of telling whether it worked.

1. The step, in one sentence.
2. The date you will have taken it by.
3. How you will know whether it worked.
4. Who you have told, so it does not quietly disappear.