[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Soldier Boy

Its funny that when you reach proper adulthood you realise that far too much pressure is put on all of it anyway... there's literally nothing you can't do starting from scratch as an adult (if you're intelligent and capable). You have to take a slightly different route into things but it's always possible. Maybe something like medicine a bit harder -- but who wants to be a medical doctor in the UK these days? .

Exactly, you can resit your GCSEs and ALevels pretty much immediately in almost any college, or do an Access Course which can give you everything you need to go to university.

I think a few of my friends could have done with a do-over after school - they did BS degrees like Media Studies, or academic subjects when they had no interest in teaching or working in a field related to that degree. More than a few wish they hadn't wasted their student finance, and now want to go into nursing or teaching or other jobs which require degrees.

Spoiler:

For the record, I'm not one of those who thinks "too many" people are going to university, or that its only utility is to train people to get a job. But I do think people should think more carefully about what they're studying.