Rich in many ways

Last year Ianthe Fullagar won a £7,055,142.10 Euromillions pay-out during her gap-year and, despite the hefty win, the 18-year-old was set on going to university to study law. Sooraj Shah asks whether, when money is no object, a degree should be your first priority

We have all had the occasional day dream of what it would be like to be filthy rich, but do you really think everything you would want to happen would go completely to plan? Ask yourself, honestly, if you won the lottery, what would you do? Would you instantly splash out and head to the penthouse suite at the Ballagio or would you remain discreet so as to make sure you always have true friends. Perhaps more important is not where and how you spend your new found wealth, but the effect it would have on the trajectory of your life. Everyone says of lottery money that ‘it won’t change them’. Fair enough, perhaps, if you were settled in a career, with a family. But what if you were a student, for all intents and purposes, at the beginning of your life? Would you remain at university and try your best to secure a good degree or would you live off the money you won through pure luck?

It brings an important point to hand, are we as students all working towards degrees for all the wrong reasons?  It seems that a degree is part of a list of things necessary to attain any coveted job position. Just another rite of passage to be checked off a list of things to do. Perhaps even as little as 10 years ago things were different, where a degree seemed like more than enough on your CV. For the vast majority of students, the degree course itself has absolutely nothing to do with the job we wish to acquire or the job we may well end up with. Although, even when students agree that their degree may not necessarily land them in their dream job, it seems a degree does still carry other kinds of kudos. As one final year University of Manchester Economics student, Saavan, 21, puts it, “I don’t want to finish my degree because of the job I want to acquire but because I want to prove to myself more than anyone that I can succeed at everything I do.” Kapil Khagram, 21, a University of Manchester graduate agrees to an extent but goes on to say, “I would want to know that I can make it on my own, money is important but I’m not a quitter.”

It is possible nowadays that a literature student can end up filling a role in a bank, whilst a business student could end up working as a freelance journalist. Of course students on vocational courses like law, medicine, dentistry and optometry are less likely to follow a ‘new’ path due to the fact that their course entails theoretical and practical work which will help with their destined careers. And as University of Manchester third year medic student Priya Patel, 21, states, “education is an investment in itself.”
What becomes clear from talking to Priya, Saavan and Kapil is that working for a degree and being a student can be vital in developing your identity.  To those of you who have no doubt that they would quit the lecture hall at the first whiff of a hundred or so £50 notes, it’s worth considering how this could affect your sense of self.  Yes, lottery money can take you and your loved ones to a holiday with five-star accommodation where you can lie on the beach with waiters at your beck and call, bringing you Pina Colada’s as you watch the sunset – but what will you do when you get home?

Gap-year student Ianthe Fullagar won £7million on the lottery

Ianthe Fullagar, 18, from Cumbria, won the lottery jackpot in September 2008. Yet she told press at the time that she was still “going to live the life of a student in digs. The only thing I won’t need is a loan.”

She was also adamant that she didn’t “want a millionaire lifestyle … I’d look silly driving a flash car.” While the rest of us might not be as keen to live on beans on toast given the choice, Ianthe does raise a key issue. If you turned your back on your previous state of existence just because you came into some money wouldn’t you be displacing yourself from all that you know and love? How would you relate to your peers?

That said, when many of today’s students have no idea what they want to do or where they want to be – a scary thought considering a span of only three years in which they will finish their degrees and want to obtain a job – investing your time and money in a degree may not always seem like a well-calculated risk.
It says a lot about the world we live in that the influx of tuition fees hasn’t affected the amount of students going to university. In fact it is quite the opposite; more students are attending university every year. The government had aimed for half of the countries school-leavers at sixth form or college to attend a university, only lessening the meaning behind a degree. Does it make sense for many degree holders to not have a job, whilst others who never made it to university could hold a job themselves? Perhaps it does, as those who never went to university may have been out in the real world gaining skills valuable to their preferred career path.
Of course this doesn’t mean students can’t work in their spare time too, but perhaps they don’t have as much flexibility with where they work as they have to work part-time. If you think about the skills within the course you are studying and how many of them you have to replicate in the real world there are few, if any at all. In essay-based subjects such as Linguistics, History or Philosophy for instance, the use of good English is necessary but they don’t demand the same style of writing as an article written by a journalist or a book written by an author. This is why first year Manchester Metropolitan film and media student Mariam Fletcher says, “I would rather go abroad and get some work experience there [than carry on with my degree], as it would look so much better on my CV to get firsthand experience as opposed to academic prowess.”

A report by DLHE (Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education) in 2005 suggests there is something in this as it reveals that many graduates experience an initial difficulty in gaining employment in their desired industries. Instead it appears many take time to obtain further qualifications whilst working part-time in a ‘non-graduate’ job. In other words, our degrees are not enough to be in with a shout to gain a role in a sought-after profession, we need other skills. So if you did win the lottery you could gain work experience without having to worry about not being paid – a real concern for many students trying to crack competitive job markets. But would it be enough? Many of these jobs that require work experience still require a degree, it’s not an and/or situation.

Kerri Cartwright, 28, from Scotland, was a student until she won £2.5m on the lottery in 2007 and said after winning the money that she would defer her course and possibly not go back to it. Hypothetically though, if you disregarded your degree course due to its irrelevance to your dream job and settled for living off lottery money for the rest of your life, would it satisfy you? For many, being rich is not a label everyone wants. How would you feel if, like Hugh Grant’s character in About a Boy, when asked what you do for a living you had no choice but to reply, “nothing. I do nothing.” Being labelled as a doctor or lawyer or charity organiser on the other hand can turn you from sounding dull to quite an accomplished person.

So it is true that most of our degree courses are irrelevant to our future endeavours. And yes, we need to check it off our lists as something we have done. But if you won the lottery would you still want that dream job, if not for the money then for the challenge presented in front you? And if the answer is yes, money or no money, then chances are you’re going to need a degree.