First in the Family: How It Feels Being a First-Generation Student

Someone on LinkedIn really got under my skin today. They were arguing that a university degree is “not worth it,” framing it as a financial miscalculation, pointing to student loan debt and the earning outcomes of other earlier career paths. What struck me most was that the argument came from someone who already holds a degree.

There is a quiet privilege in being able to dismiss higher education after having already benefited from it. For first-generation students, the question of whether university is “worth it” has rarely been purely economic.

For many, growing up meant being told to do well, and studying hard was mentioned as one way, but there was nobody around who had experienced higher education first-hand. University was presented as an abstract good, and the encouragement to strive for that was there, but not guidance.

For some, early academic performance was treated as a measure of potential and somehow shaped whether confidence and participation felt justified. Even when performance improved later on, ambition could still feel risky. In such environments, aiming higher or further could be easily read as being a try-hard, turning aspiration into something socially odd and pushing it into a private desire rather than something that could be openly shared or celebrated.

When ambition is learned in private rather than shared openly, the practical work of getting to university often becomes a lonely battle. For first-generation students, applying to university often means navigating systems alone, from admission processes to personal statements, all decoded without inherited knowledge. There is no one to translate the rules, and decisions are made based on guesswork and prestige signals.

Arriving at university doesn’t resolve that uncertainty. It often follows students into classes, surfacing in the pause before speaking. There is so much going on in their minds – the careful wording of a question, the hesitation over whether a thought is worth voicing at all. Belonging can feel like something to be earned rather than naturally existing.

That’s why narratives about university being “just for the vibes,” or jokes about scraping passes, can feel alien. For those without a safety net, higher education is not casual, and neither is failure. There are costs for failure, and for first-generation students, it could feel like they can’t afford to fail. They often carry the weight of education on behalf of family members who never had the same access, and in the hope of setting an example for those who come after.

That’s why the casual dismissal of pursuing university is careless.

Learning happens everywhere, through work and life experiences, and even self-directed curiosity. But higher education offers something structurally different, the sustained access to intellectual communities, time and space to think deeply, and environments where questioning and discussion are encouraged.

When higher education is reduced to a “cash cow,” what gets erased are these places of collective thinking. Universities teach not just the content but how to think: how to adapt to complexity, challenge assumptions, and build knowledge together. These are not easily replicated elsewhere, particularly for those without cultural or social access to academic life.

Research from the Sutton Trust continues to show how uneven access to higher education remains, and how first-generation students are more likely to doubt their belonging and treat education as a high-stakes opportunity rather than an assumed step. So when university is declared “not worth it,” the question remains: not worth it for whom?

What often gets overlooked is that for many first-generation students, the relationship with education changes over time. There may come a moment when learning stops feeling like a mission to complete or a promise to fulfil, and begins to feel absorbing. Struggle no longer feels like a threat, but rather an interesting challenge. Academic spaces turn into places of thinking rather than performance, and education reveals itself as something genuinely enjoyable, where curiosity wins over fear.

This is where the value of higher education becomes clearest, as an environment that makes intellectual life possible for those who never imagined their thoughts mattered. And maybe that is what being first in the family actually means, being the first to say this mattered, even when the world insists it shouldn’t.