To college or not to college? This student chose the latter.

Eleanor Doughty writes at The Telegraph:

University: ‘dropping out was the best thing for me’

“I only went to university because it was expected of me” is an explanation that few dare to give of their experience of higher education. But this is Ellie Muffitt’s story, one she explains over a pot of tea in a café in London’s financial district. “It seemed obvious to me that it was what I had to do in order to get on.”

Muffitt finished school in 2010 and went straight to Manchester University to study linguistics. Within three months, personal circumstances forced her to leave. “I was sexually assaulted in the first three weeks,” she says. She returned in September 2011 to take up Chinese and linguistics. “I did that for two years, but didn’t take my exams in the second year because I had become depressed and fallen behind.”

So she left, heading to London to enrol on a journalism qualification. “It was only when I began my new course in London that I realised how miserable I’d been, and just how happy I had become since.” She now has a job working at the Telegraph, proving that not all careers come with a university degree.

As the Government’s focus on education has increased in the past few years, more young people are going into higher education. But more students must mean more dropouts.
Prof Sir David Eastwood, vice-chancellor of Birmingham University, warned of this earlier in the year; the removal of the cap on student numbers would result in university students “who are not well suited to higher education”. The implication is that with more starting the marathon, there will be more non-finishers.