Since we are based in Europe, we will focus on our demographics. When it comes to kids wanting to go to college or university, we believe the US and Europe are not so different. Since we were young, our parents told us to do well in school and go to university because that would give us a chance to access the upper class and earn more money than the average person.

Nowadays, slightly over 50% of people who finish school in Germany start going to university. In 2004, it was 37%. This tells us more and more people are attending university, but if you think logically, not everyone can earn hundreds of thousands of euros a year. That means some of those people are wasting years of their life to make the same amount of money as the person who went straight to work after school.

One big factor why young people stress about going to university is social status. Telling people that you’re going to university and studying for a bachelor’s degree always sounds fancy and sophisticated, even if it’s something unnecessary like gender studies. On the other hand, telling people that you went to work right after school doesn’t get much recognition and is not valued as much.

For parents, it’s nice to say, “Oh yeah, my kid lives in Munich, and he or she is going to uni.” But what about the kid who went straight to work? Another big problem in this space is there are just too many options to choose from. In 2021, there were 21,000 different study programs to choose from; five years earlier, that number was 18,500, and it’s still increasing. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is debatable.

What many people who go to university don’t understand is that someone who went straight to work after school has much more practical experience in the field than someone who only learned everything in theory.

Having said that, our opinion is that it depends on what you want to do. For example, a lawyer, architect, engineer, or doctor definitely needs to go to university. Someone who is into business and wants to get into JP Morgan or Chase Bank as an investment banker or private equity as an analyst also needs to go to university. But there’s no need for the next gender economics degree.

When it comes to going to university, it’s crucial to have a clear aim of where you want to go with that degree and where that degree will take you. Understand that a degree is no guarantee of above-average pay. That always comes down to how clear your vision is.

See you on Sunday!