Should I Go to University?

An open letter to anyone trying to decide — and a way of thinking it through.

I went to university and loved it. Two of my children did too. Others of mine are choosing very differently — and I think they’re just as right.

So this isn’t an argument for going, or against it. Anyone who gives you a blanket answer to this is selling you theirs, not finding you yours. What follows is just a way of working out what you would choose. If it’s helpful, use it. If not, don’t.

Here’s the first thing, and it’s the thing almost everyone gets wrong: “Is university worth it?” is the wrong question — because university isn’t one thing. It’s a bundle: a qualification, some teaching, a signal to employers, a few years to become a person, and, above all, a few hundred people to do life with. The mistake is to weigh the bundle as a lump. Pull it apart, and the decision gets clear.

Start with the part everyone thinks they’re buying: the teaching — the information. Be honest about what’s happened here. Anything well-defined — the lectures, the facts, the worked examples — a machine now delivers instantly, patiently, brilliantly, for the price of a couple of coffees a month. So if the only reason to go is to be taught the content, that reason has quietly evaporated. Don’t pay three years and a fortune for the thing that just became nearly free. If you go, go for the parts a machine can’t hand you — and that’s the whole question, so let me come back to it properly.

First, two quick filters.

Is it a gate? Some doors only open with the key. Doctor, lawyer, vet, engineer, architect — the degree isn’t optional, it’s the licence. If your thing genuinely needs the key, go and get the key. That’s the cleanest “yes” there is.

Is it your choice, or is it the script? From a young age you’ve been handed a thick stack of beliefs about what you’re supposed to do, and “obviously you go to university” sits near the top. You didn’t choose it; it was handed to you. So ask the most powerful question I know: what would I choose? If the honest answer is “I’m only doing this because it’s what you do” — stop. That used to be the safe answer; the default came with a guarantee. The world changed and the guarantee went with it. “Because everyone does” has gone from the safest reason to the riskiest one.

Now the heart of it.

Whatever you choose — bet on what stays rare. As the machines get better at everything well-defined, the value of all that doesn’t vanish — it moves. It moves to the things they can’t do, and there’s a short, precious list: skills with people, skills with your voice, confidence, and the ability to stay calm and creative when there’s no right answer. Reading a room. Holding a room. Saying the thing that makes someone feel something. Walking into a space full of strangers and connecting. Improvising when there’s no script and no rulebook — which, by the way, is most of real life and all of the interesting bits. A machine can imitate the words. It cannot be there, in the flesh, doing it live, and meaning it.

And here’s what hardly anyone is telling you: those skills aren’t just becoming more valuable because the machines can’t do them. They’re becoming more valuable because fewer and fewer people can do them at all. You grew up inside screens — not your fault; they were built to be impossible to put down by people far cleverer and better-funded than any young person resisting them. But it’s left a whole generation with less practice at the simple, hard, human things: eye contact, a real conversation, composure when all eyes are on you. So if you get genuinely good at those — on purpose — you won’t just be ahead of the machines. You’ll be ahead of almost everyone your age. That’s not a soft skill. In the world that’s coming it’s the hardest currency there is.

Which should make you completely rethink what “safe” and “risky” even mean. For years we were told the safe path was the technical one and the risky path was the human, creative one — the performing, the speaking, the making. But the technical, well-defined skills are exactly what’s being automated, and the human ones are exactly what’s getting rarer and more valuable. The bet quietly flipped. The disciplines that train you in voice, presence, collaboration and thinking on your feet — drama, performance, the arts, anything that puts you in front of real people and asks you to be fully human — are not the indulgence they’re made out to be. They are training in the most future-proof skills on the planet. And even if you never make your living on a stage, you carry that toolkit into every room you’ll ever walk into — leading, teaching, persuading, building, starting things. There is no room where being unmistakably, skilfully human is a disadvantage.

So when you weigh a course, don’t ask “is this subject safe?” Ask: does this build the things that stay rare?

That’s also the best reason left to go to university at all — because the single most valuable thing it still offers is the one part no machine can touch: the people. Teams, bands, shared projects, a whole cohort to build things with in the same room, at the exact age you form the friendships, partnerships and ideas of a lifetime. That’s not the fun extra around the edge of the degree. In the world that’s coming, it might be the main thing you’re actually buying. If that’s why you want to go — go.

Then sanity-check whatever you’re leaning towards with three words that multiply together — and if any one of them is zero, the whole thing is zero:

Wisdom × Willingness × Wherewithal.

Do you understand what you’re signing up for and why? Do you genuinely want it — or just want to have wanted it? And have you got, or can you build, what it takes to make it pay off? Wisdom without willingness is a course you’ll drop. Willingness without wherewithal is a wish. Notice this works just as well for the thing you’d do instead of university as for university itself.

And here’s a simple way to know if you’ve got a real answer rather than a story you’re telling yourself. Imagine explaining your decision to a sceptical relative — the one who thinks you can’t do anything. “I’m going because…” or “I’m not going because…” — then the reason, then the plan. If they can follow the line from what you’re doing to where it gets you, and it holds up, you’re onto something. If the only thing holding it together is “it’s what you do,” it isn’t a plan — it’s the script wearing a gown.

Remember too: university is one path across an enormous, barely-touched landscape — apprenticeships, building something of your own, a job that teaches you faster than any seminar, a year doing something hard and real. It might be exactly the right door for you. Just make sure you’re choosing it, not defaulting to it because it’s the only one you were shown. And whatever you choose, you can change it. Going isn’t a vow; not going isn’t a door slammed shut. Start, review honestly, adapt. The skill was never getting it perfectly right at seventeen — it’s staying willing to re-author the story as you go.

So don’t ask “is university worth it?” Ask the better question: what would I choose — and can I give an honest reason for it? Bet on what stays rare. Be unmistakably human. And then go, or don’t go, with your whole heart. Either can be the right answer. Only the script is the wrong one.

And — as we say to every student at Cambridge Leadership College — don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to anyone. Do your own thinking.