The best thing you can do is to study away from home

I was recently at a conference on Higher Education when the speaker proudly announced “We must retain our learners in the North East. Let’s keep the talent here, encourage young people to stay and study in their home towns.” I listened to the talk, understanding exactly what the speaker was getting at, yet thinking that both he and those who were fervently nodding along to his every word were missing the bigger picture entirely. University isn’t just about the relentless accumulation of qualifications so that you can shin up the greasy pole with the other rats in the race; it’s also about learning and experiencing life. I am well aware that University these days is sickeningly expensive for students and their families and that nurturing homegrown talent brings in much needed revenue to local towns, looks good on retention stats and strengthens our future workforce. However this incessant desire to keep learners holed up in their home towns is deeply concerning. Going away to university was the best thing I ever did.

I know that going away to university is invaluable because I, like thousands of other students every year, studied away from home. I have just returned from an epic Nottingham University ten year reunion with my two best friends. It feels like yesterday that I left home for the first time, a bag of nerves manifested in relentless chatter in the back of my poor dad’s car… “Are we there yet…?” “It can’t be much further surely…” “Dad, look it’s the turn off for Nottingham…” “Get me, I’m actually going to a (posh voice) Red Brick!” I remember the emotional goodbye to my boyfriend of the time. I totally believed I marry him; his name had been firmly etched on my calculator all the way through sixth form. It lasted a while and he came up to visit me a few times… but the whole experience of being away from home made me crave something a little bit more exciting than shiny black shoes with a buckle and an M&S meal for two could offer. I realised pretty quickly that I didn’t want to settle. I wanted to explore, to experience, to live!

It didn’t take me long to loose the nerves and get into the swing of university life. I soon discovered that university sports teams nights out are legendary… not something easily taken part in if you have to get the last bus home for tea with the family! Meeting my best friends was a natural process, we were drawn together and have remained best friends ever since; we studied together, lived together and shared the highs and lows of university life. If one of us had studied from home, I genuinely believe that we would never have developed as close a friendship as the friendship we are lucky enough to share now. Katherine and I were in the same lectures, two atheists on a Theology degree. We went for a cup of tea, talked about sex and hair straightners and I thought Thank God I’m not the only person on my degree course who can say the word penis without having to atone with fifteen Hail Mary’s and a deep sense of self loathing. After that cup of tea and deeply important conversation, we never looked back. I lived with Ellen. I had heard rumors that she was a total football head and she had heard the same about me. We spent a couple of pints in the local pub trying to out-do one another in facts but I soon realised as Ellen reeled off the occupation of every Derby players’ second cousin that I was fighting a loosing battle. I bowed down to her greatness and we spent every Saturday thereafter munching on Chinese takeaway and placing reserved signs on the sofa for Match of the Day.

The three of us have been best friends ever since those early university days. We’ve danced in nightclubs in our socks, drunk cartons of red wine in the library, had deep chats over shitty boys, drunk a lot of beer, watched a lot of football, tested each other on our revision notes (we did do some work, honestly, we really did). We invented extreme naughts and crosses and came up with ideas for the next big TV show… I am still adamant that Girls on the Sofa will one day become a reality! We’ve since moved to opposite ends of the country, attempted to grow up and meet people and get jobs… but being back together ten years on in our university town and all the amazing times that we’ve shared, living together and studying away from home, remain crystal clear in my mind. Three has never been a crowd for us, in a way that a stay at home group of three might have been. The shared experience of being young and away from home cemented our friendship. Learning how to change a light bulb, paying the electricity bill on time and balancing drunken nights out with getting our essays in on time were every bit as valuable learning experiences as attending lectures and the piece of paper at the end of it all saying 2:1. University is about living life so that you can progress in life; staying at home to learn does not allow you the same opportunity to do that.

Some people may be reading this and thinking that this is all self indulgent twaddle. They might wonder how drinking and dancing and sharing a house together is at all beneficial to adult life, to career progression? Students are forever getting a bad press for actually daring to venture out of the library once in a while for a bit of fun. The point is that these experiences, the opportunity to live in the bubble of university life, has made me the person I am today. Learning away from home makes you resilient, gives you the necessary skills to negotiate a path through life’s complexities, meeting people from all walks of life and from all over the world along the way. If you think about it, when else (unless you are in the forces) are you ever asked, aged eighteen, to leave your family, move into a new city and happily co-exist with a group of total strangers? Moving away to university opens up opportunities to embrace diversity that I would never have had sat in my parents house, drinking cups of tea and trotting off to my local university.

So to the man who spoke so passionately at the Higher Education Conference and to all those who feel that we need to keep a firm grasp on our learners, shepherding them into the local Polytechnic, I would say back off and consider other important issues at stake here. For our best learners to truly shine, encourage them to move away from home, to experience university life away from family and away from their social norm. Yes we may loose a percentage of talented young graduates to jobs in other parts of the country, indeed to other parts of the world. However, I can guarantee that those who return to the North East having studied away will return as better rounded individuals, resilient and well equipped to deal with a great range of people and situations; they may even be innovative enough to create some new jobs, as opposed to settling for one of the 90% of recycled jobs we have to entice our young people in the North East at present? Let our young people go away to study and we will reap the rewards in the long run.