Abolish Education: Whose Idea Was It To Send Nineteen Year Olds To University Anyway

A little bit about university now. I should start by saying that I do have broader views in regard what should happen regarding further education, but at the moment I can't be arsed going into it all. Maybe I'll do a series of posts about it at a later date. However, one point I would like to make is about the age at which people go to university.

Am I the only person that thinks it's madness sending people there when they're in their late teens or early twenties? Whether it's state-funded or privately-funded it seems crazy that we're spending so much money trying to educate people who are at precisely the wrong age to be educated. When people reach the age of eighteen they're experiencing adult life for the first time in all its glory. Alcohol, sex, living without parental supervision, live music, political activism, drugs (can I say that?), and so on and so on. Expecting someone at that stage of their life to sit in reading and learning is a bit like sending someone to a fairground and expecting them not to go on the rides. Not very realistic at all.

Often when you hear older people talking about their university life they'll say things like "...if I knew then what I know now I'd have spent more time studying and less time partying." That's because adult life gets boring fairly quickly, and they realise that university was a once in a lifetime opportunity that they never made the most of. Having realised this they then try to impress (without any success) the importance of education upon the next generation. Futile.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just have the university experience later in life. If I was in charge no-one under the age of twenty-five would be allowed to go. People are living to over a hundred these days. Why are we wasting university on the one bunch of people that actually have a social life to lead?