Not everyone is destined for university.
Even though I completed many years of undergraduate school at a liberal arts university, I watched a unbelievable number of people struggle with school right away and were forced to find another way to lead their lives.
The class load can get serious no matter what major or minor you pursue in your time. I knew some students who were taking up to eight classes at once, but then the two of us knew other students that barely eked by with 3 courses each year. While it’s technically cheaper in the short term, it will end up costing you more down the road because you’ll require more years to graduate and that will mean another year or 2 of room and board expenses. Some kids can’t do it for no reason other than it being the less-than-ideal way of pursuing a career in the long term. That’s why I eagerly encouraged my kid to try something else when university started to overwhelm him to the point of absolute collapse. I could see that he was burning out and it wasn’t even the end of the second year yet. Over that summer, he thought long and hard about it and decided to train to become an Heating, Ventilation & A/C worker. Apparently a single of his friends from high school was already certified as a heating and cooling professional, and encouraged my kid to try it out for himself. Heating, Ventilation & A/C workers make good money so I was thrilled to see my kid succeed at something I knew would keep him comfortable in life, even if he wasn’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination.