To what degree is university life worth pursuing?

Odd, yet somehow wonderful how these things happen. Back along I found myself in a pub I seldom visit talking to a chap I had never seen before and will no doubt never see again when we both spontaneously felt the need to burst into song.

It was one of those tonguetwisting Gilbert and Sullivan ballads.

We were loud, completely out of tune and... utterly brilliant. From us poured the Sir Joseph Porter song from HMS Pinafore and we belted it out all the way from

“When I was a lad I served a term as office boy at an attorney’s firm” all the way through to “Stick close

to your desks and never go to sea and you all may be rulers of the Queen’s navee!”

My new companion and I agreed that while this was sour Victorian political satire, there was, actually, a positive message to be found within: never be without ambition – no matter how humble your origins,

you can still make it to the top.

Rather like the constant reminders from Cpl Jones in Dad’s Army that

when he was out in The Sudan with Kitchener, every proud private had a field marshal’s baton in his rucksack.

That was back in the good old days, however. When, apart from in the fields of medicine and veterinary science, the only thing you needed to get to the pinnacle of any profession was intelligence and determination.

Even class wasn’t an insurmountable obstacle. As Henry Higgins could testify.

But in just a decade or so that has all changed.

To get anywhere today – from council dog warden to the dizzying heights of supermarket management – you have had to have spent a long-time slogging over A

Levels then spent years at university and gained a degree.

Oh yes, and gathered debts of at least £60,000 in the process.

There are many aspects to this shift in the way we do things. The social difference, a growing flood of students has made to our cities here in the South West, for example. Culturally it has been great – theatre, the arts, etc, etc – yet how do locals feel?

I wonder, when they can see thousands of new flats for students being built on all horizons yet council house waiting lists just get longer and longer?

And how many of our handful of Labour MPs would be in office without the transient “Oh Jeremy Corbyn!” second year media studies vote?

All matters, perhaps, to be discussed another time. This, though, is about individuals and their way to progress in their chosen vocations – and if you have just taken the university shilling or have waved a loved one goodbye on their first term away, there is not good news.

According to the House of Commons select committee on further education, almost half of all students are getting little in return for their vast fees, an inflexible service and poor job prospects.

“The blunt reality is that too many universities are not providing value for money and that students are not getting good outcomes from their degrees,” said chairman Robert Halfon MP.

We can only pray there are enough safe spaces on campus for them to shelter once this news sinks in.

Can universities be blamed for cashing in, mind you, when much of the demand for degrees – any old degrees – lies with employers?

Job, after job, after job – at even the lowest levels – now demand a degree. Nurses, officers in the military, folk sat in front of computers at the district council planning office.

And do we really need that copper chasing a speeding motorist to have a 2:1 in fashion and fabric design? Can’t we simply lower the paper qualifications needed, lower future debt and at the same time open doors once again for the bright, yet not academically so?

Gilbert and Sullivan’s mickey-take of Sir Joseph Porter, incidentally, was a spoof on the real life of W H .Smith – that’s right, the bloke with stores in the high street – who made it to the rank of First Sea Lord despite having no naval knowledge or expertise whatsoever.

He did, though, have lots of money and friends in high places.

And he did it all without going to university – his dad was a shop assistant from Wrington in Somerset.

And do we really need that copper chasing a speeding motorist to have a 2:1 in fashion and fabric design? Can’t we simply lower the paper qualifications needed, lower future debt and at the same time open doors again for the bright, yet unacademic