What if universities imposed a minimum age for enrollment? It came up over drinks with some friends, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The idea was that at 18 years of age, one has little to no life experience, and might make a better, more fulfilling decision about education by taking a few years after high school to work, travel, and grow up.
Jessica*, a 23-year old student at the University of Calgary, is living the consequences of attending university before she was ready. “What else do you do after high school? In grade 11 you start getting asked where you’re going to university, and so it’s just ingrained. You’re supposed to go,” she says. Jessica applied for university several months before she graduated high school, and, being an honour student, was accepted without any complications. “I was going to be a teacher,” she says. “By the end of my first year, I was pretty sure [being] a teacher was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to spend my life doing.”
That summer she worked as a waitress at a small pub close to her home, then went back to university, this time changing her major to English. “I loved to read, and in high school I was good at writing essays, so it seemed like it would suit me.” Between her first and second year as an English major, Jessica spent the summer travelling Europe, a generous gift from her parents. “It was cool, I’d never seen the world before.” But after her third year of university, she again changed her major.
“I was 21, living on my own, supporting myself, and I thought, ‘how is an English degree going to pay bills?'”
Now pursuing a psychology degree, Jessica thinks she has found her fit. “It feels right,” she says. “And I can establish a career with it.” Jessica is halfway through her second year of psychology, which translates to halfway through her fifth year of university. “I’m in so much debt. I didn’t have any savings before I started university, so I took out student loans. I should be graduated by now. But I’ve got two more years after this.”
I asked Jessica if she thought things could have been different for her, if she had waited until she was 21 before she started university. “I always wanted to go to university. I don’t thinking taking time off would have changed that. But I could have worked first and maybe I could have paid for some school myself. At 18, I was so naïve. Maybe if I had waited I would have been able to stick to one major.”
Looking back at my 19-year old self when I started university, I wonder what would have happened had I waited a few more years. I know for sure that if I were to go back to school now, at 25, it would be a completely different experience. I’ve matured significantly (partly thanks to five years of university), and can’t help but wonder if I would have had a better educational experience as a slightly older student. The older I got, the more effort, energy, and thought I put into my schoolwork. And guess what? I learned more.
Jessica says she’s not an uncommon student. “There are lots of us. Lots of students change majors.” She’s pretty sure, though, she would have been better off waiting a few years to start. “You should come into your own before you go to university. How can you be expected to make such an important decision when you’re only 18?”
* name has been changed
I do believe that 18 is too young to go to university. My daughter which was an honor student is in her first year of university. She was so sure that she was ready to make it out there on her own. It has been an emotional roller coaster. She definately wasn’t ready for the amount of work that comes along with university courses. She now advises her sister to make sure that she stays in high school one more year to do her grade 12B. One more year of maturity will definately be an asset. She also thought that moving away would be a real adventure. What she really didn’t realize was that there was always groceries in the house, most meals were cooked for her and she always had clean clothes to wear. Now she has to walk to pick-up her groceries, didn’t realize how much time was spent on cooking, cleaning and doing laundry. She finds that between all of that and studying she really doesn’t have time to have a social life. Her advise is wait an extra year before going to university and make sure that you really think everything through.
My guess is that even if “Jessica” started university at 21, she still wouldn’t have chosen Psychology as her first major…
It’s just a guess, but her decision to change majors came as a result of figuring out what kind of work she wanted to do, and how the degree would help get her there.
That requires her to know herself, but also what a given degree entails. Either you do the research before you enter university (which you can do while in high school), or you figure it out once you’re there.
I definitely went to university too early. I wasted the first two years because I was too young, then left. The irony is: now I’m a university professor.
So, now I see a lot of young people in the same boat I was. Parents and teachers who put pressure on high school students to go straight to university do them a great disservice.