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University education is the gateway to a successful and happy future. Equipping
young people with the core and softer skills they need to enter their careers and
achieve their goals, it also benefits the wider society, as highly educated graduates
will help improve medical care, foster innovation or run successful businesses.
Decisions made at the earliest stages of a child’s education can ensure they make
the most of this opportunity. At HSBC, we help parents plan ahead so they can
help their children fulfil their potential.
I am therefore delighted to introduce the second report in The Value of Education
series, a global consumer research study commissioned by HSBC. Learning for
life explores parents’ hopes and expectations for their children’s education and
beyond, with a focus on how parents can help children get what they need to
achieve their life goals.
The findings reveal that parents aspire to professional careers for their children,
whether in traditional fields like medicine, engineering or law, or in newer sectors
like business management or computer science.
However, parents are also conscious that, in many ways, their children have
it tougher than they did. An increasingly competitive job market means that a
standard undergraduate degree is seen as necessary but not sufficient. Young
people need to do more to stand out from their peers. Postgraduate qualifications
and studying abroad are ways to do this, but they can be costly and so require
careful advance planning.
Parents also realise that their children need to graduate with life skills as well as
academic qualifications to be attractive to employers. They need to leave university
as confident, responsible and well-rounded adults.
Independence – including financial responsibility – is viewed as the most valuable
asset with which a child can leave university. Children can gain an initial grasp
of this through contributing to their own university costs, with many parents
expecting their children to save up or get a job in order to share the funding.
However, it is parents who take the primary responsibility for funding their
children’s university education. While the majority have or expect to have a solid
plan in place for doing so, even the best laid plans can go awry. Parents often find
that, by the time their children reach university age, they have not saved as much
as they intended. The result is that both they and their children are faced with
borrowing more and paying off debt for longer than they had planned.
I hope the insights in this report will help parents appreciate the long-term impact
of their decisions and put practical measures in place to ensure their children can
fulfil their potential.
Charlie Nunn
Group Head of Wealth Management, HSBC