A comprehensive list of items you could’ve purchased for £32,000 instead of your lousy degree

Graduation – the comfort of student life has not gently released you from its warm embrace. More likely, it’s been ripped ruthlessly from your grasp. “Welcome to the real world kid”, a mysterious cloaked figure mutters before disappearing into the distance.

Just in case it had passed from memory, the average debt of a UK graduate is £32,220.

No money, no job, no hope. Staring down the barrel of a gun filled with 32,000 pound coins (plus interest). The trigger is limply pulled for 25 drawn-out years. Alternatively, die and it’s on the house.

Feeling like you’ve made a terrible mistake? Me too. Here’s a list of things we could have spent our tuition fees and maintenance loans on instead.

12,800 VKs

Let’s begin with the obvious. If you drank all of these then you will have had pretty much the same experience as if you’d gone to university. After all, not having a degree doesn’t stop you from being a full-time legend.

Nearly TWO degrees from The Open University

With honours degrees costing around £17,000 from The Open University, you could double up a useless Philosophy degree with a side order of something like Engineering, or maybe even Biochemistry. Something that will get you a job, yeah? Everybody loves a bargain and the best thing about these online degrees is you won’t even have to leave the house!

33 per cent of a deposit on a flat in London

The average deposit on a property in London is £90,000. Just for those that didn’t already know: You. Will. Never. Be. Able. To. Own. A. Property. In. London.

Or, a whole deposit on a property anywhere else in the UK

Why settle for a mere slice of property ownership when you can become a fully-fledged real estate mogul by owning an entire building in what could have been your university town. How will you pay the mortgage? Did you not hear me? You are now a PROPERTY MOGUL, you’ll figure it out.

1,392.52 acres of land on the planet Mars

Why limit your home ownership ambitions to our own planet? Invest in vast swathes of rock and dust on Mars and be the envy of all your mates who are now paying through the nose for a bedsit in Bethnal Green.

Three gap yahs

This Daily Mail article suggests you can travel the world for £11,000 a year. I’ve done some sums and by my calculations, this means that £32,000 would get you around three years of travel. This is conveniently the same time it takes to complete an undergraduate degree, but with the added bonus that you’ll have “found yourself” three times over.

2,911 Peter Andre mugs AND coasters

Sometimes in this life, you have to take a gamble. Would thousands of mugs with the face of a barely relevant celebrity be an unreasonable purchase? The answer is yes. What about if you throw thousands of matching coasters for the aforementioned mugs into the mix? All I’m saying is it’s something to make you stop and think for a second.

Seven and a half years of public transport in London

They say the world is your oyster, but if you loaded £32,000 onto your Oyster card you could travel from Heathrow to Cockfosters or Ealing Broadway to Upminster as many times as you wanted, just for the hell of it, every day for seven years. You could just go round and round on the circle line for months trying to figure out what to do with your life while all of your mates have gone off to uni.

Eight WHOLE horses

Could I have foreseen what would happen when I innocently typed “buy a horse UK new” into Google? Have I now realised that new horses are called foals? Did I use to think that baby horses were called ponies? Am I learning a lot? Yes, yes I am.

A three-hour speech from George Osborne

This is probably not enough time to explain why he helped to triple tuition fees. What a naughty man.

More than 10,000 meal deals

It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something so after 10,000 meal deals you will probably have found the perfect combination of sandwich, drink and crisps and go down in the history books as one of the greats.

106,666 Freddos

This list would not be complete without converting your student debt into the well-known currency of Freddos. What are you supposed to do with over 100,000 Freddos? I don’t know…build a fort, bathe in them, the possibilities are endless.