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Its that time of the year again. August may be the height of summer holidays but its also a stressful time for school leavers. GCSEs, A levels, Highers – results which can determine so much of your immediate and long term future. Its estimated that over half of all British school leavers go onto university but more and more people are wondering whether a university education is worth the time and the cost?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself over the last few years. Having worked in the university sector for over 25 years. I’m still an advocate for higher education but I understand why it can be a struggle and not for everyone. The desire to start work or a business, to earn a living, to avoid high student debt – they’re all are good reasons. But I also feel that over the years the increasing commodification of education, especially university education, has created its own pressures. The constant debates about the usefulness of a degree, and how much you will earn on graduating has skewed a central purpose of higher education – that having the space to think and ask deeper questions of life is a precious and moral good. A disciplined and inspiring education is like an investment in yourself and in your country – the rewards aren’t always immediate but more often than not, the experience and learning will sustain you and your society in different ways throughout your life.

I often think back to when I asked my parents why they came to the UK – their reply was they came for work but stayed for education. They saw education at every level more broadly as a kind of awakening, a salvation of the mind and heart. Education can take you from one world and drop you into another, it’s a gift no-one can take away from you. Islam gave us a centre, a connection and a culture but learning was about stretching the mind, unsettling yourself without any guarantees of where you might find yourself. Its perhaps why this particular Prophetic hadith always appealed to me, ` Wisdom is the lost property of the believer, so wherever he finds it, then he has a right to it.’

TS Eliot said that `a part of the function of education is to help us escape from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.’ But today the increasing focus on how to measure the worth of education risks gradually eclipsing its very power.

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