Should you avoid the university trap

Is the cost of going to university worth it in the real world?

Getting a business degree at university will set you back a cool ￡35,000. These days, often a lot more.

It will also take, in the worst case, four or five years of your life.

But what do you get out of it?

In my four years at university – three doing a business degree and one a diploma in marketing and business before my final year – I learned a lot of business lingo and played with case studies.

Is that enough to justify an increasingly steep price tag that runs into tens of thousands of pounds?

What did you get out of university?

The thinking used to go that you needed to go to university if you wanted to get a high-paying job.

For some industries, this might still be true. If you want to go into law or medicine, you can't skip the book learning.

But studying business?

All the “language of business” I learned in my four years of university I could have learned on a three or four-week intensive course.

Apart from some terminology, university gave me a nascent network and the ability to write long analyses on business plans that are almost completely useless in reality.

That's not much to show for ￡35,000.

Is there a better idea?

I think having children makes you think back to what you wish you'd done differently in your own life.

If my son grows up and wants to go into business, I hope that he'll let me invest in a franchise for him.

Of course, he's at the age where his current obsession changes weekly. At the moment he wants to be a space engineer, so maybe he'll go into something else entirely.

I'll support him fully in whatever he wants to do, of course. Having an astronaut in the family doesn't sound too bad at all.

But looking back, I wish I'd done what my cousins did: learn a trade.

The advantage of learning a trade

While I was playing with case studies and paying for the privilege, my cousins were earning money while they were learning.

They bought property before I was even out of university. They were a good ten years ahead on their road to financial freedom than I was.

This speaks to the debate we always seem to see – whether learning a trade or running a business is best.

Today, to that I say, why not do both?

Being your own boss, learning and earning

Combine learning a trade with running your own business as your own boss and earning as you go and what do you get?

A franchise. It's another reason why I think franchising is the best business model available.

Of course, some might say that going to university gave them the start to their network and they might not have built one without it.

Hello? A franchise is essentially a ready-made network that – if it's anything like a Fantastic Services franchise – includes experts whose job it is to train you in the best way to operate your business.

Others might say that the franchise fee is not nothing. I accept that.

But stacked up against ￡35 000 or more of student debt for no guaranteed prospects and learning a bit of business lingo, I'd pay a franchise fee any day of the week.

The university trap

I can't help but feel that going to university to study business is a trap. I spent years there where I could have been earning and learning as I went.

When set against the prospect of learning a trade while getting hands-on experience of being my own boss, I think a whole lot more young people these days should be considering investing in a franchise as the way to a satisfying and profitable career.

Do you agree? Would you trade your years at university for four more years of actual experience?

Comment below and let's get the conversation started!