Bloated unis are a lesson in stupidity

IT IS now almost 30 years since this country made one of its gravest mistakes – the expansion of universities.

The vast cost of this folly has now found its way on to the Government books, after long years when the Treasury tried to pretend that student debt – much of which will never be paid off – wasn’t a national liability.

And within days of this outbreak of truth, unchallengeable research confirmed what every properly educated person has known for many years, that the ‘degrees’ awarded by the new expanded universities are inflated paper. Even deluded foreign admirers of Britain will have spotted this.

What the Major and Blair governments did when they expanded universities was to raise the school leaving age to 22, so hiding much of the terrible youth unemployment in this country. And then they compelled the young victims of this fraud to take out huge debts to pay for their often-wasted years at oftenmiserable colleges.

Who will have the courage to admit that this was a terrible mistake, and close it down? How many more poor school-leavers will end their college years clutching certificates they can barely read, qualified only for flipping burgers, while the foolish comprehensive schools, which failed to teach them what they really need to know, continue to decay and decline?