Why tomorrow’s parents won’t want their children to go to university

Could the current generation of parents be the first ones who won’t want their children to go to university? Until now that mortarboard photo on the sideboard has always been the dream, visual proof that your offspring have munched their way to the top of the educational food chain. Advancement by degree. But that was before tuition fees. Now there’s a price tag attached to your little one’s ‘ology’ (to quote Maureen Lipman in those BT ads), how many people will automatically see it as a good thing? Perhaps more of us will refuse to prostrate ourselves before the great god Uni? If so, that can only be a good thing.

I attended Manchester University between 1989 and 1992. Given those three years again, I wouldn’t bother — I’d get straight to work. Or rather straight back to work: after school I’d spent a year as an office junior, earning a few quid and discovering what this thing called ‘employment’ was all about.