Why do so many people HAVE to go to university and why was there so much upset last Thursday?

How can any parent or adult advise an 18-year-old that he or she is doing the right thing by studying, say history of art, with the almost certain fact that they will leave with a £20,000 debt in three years and poor employment prospects?

Our education system is screwed up. For too long it seems successive governments have used the university system to ensure thousands of youngsters have somewhere to go thereby keeping them off unemployment figures and at least occupied.

Once upon a time uni meant something. For most of the 20th Century it actually meant you were from privileged background and uni gave you three years of punting and partying before you left to command the oiks.

I believe in universities as a place for people to develop, to enjoy learning, to find out more about themselves and the world. University was not just an extension of school, it was about personal growth for an individual.

During the sixties and seventies uni education entry was widened a little. The undergraduate was in the main hairy, a bit smelly and thought LSD and marijuana were a vital part of the thought process, but they largely went on to contribute to our society (or in the case of doctors: emigrate).

The eighties marked a change. Britain embraced the ‘greed is good’ philosophy, and who gave a toss about personal development? With East End lads earning zillions in the City without a qualification to their name, the whole system seemed a little bit shaky.

Then with the spectre of increasing unemployment in the early nineties (remember how bad we all thought that recession was?) it seemed like a good idea to keep kids in school for as long as possible.

And so polytechnics were allowed to become universities in 1992. Personally I still cannot view the University of the West of England as anything other than Bristol Polytechnic. Bristol has a university, it’s called Bristol University.

So, the demise of the poly, and all its work-orientated courses, meant everyone was able to go to university.

We as a country embraced this year after year as more and more youngsters with ever improving A level results sampled university life for three short years (a student year is only about five months of ‘work’ remember).

Do not be under any illusion all you parents who fear for your child’s future unless they go to uni, just look at the courses on offer and remember: Universities invent their own courses.

Deans have allowed degree courses to be invented to fit demand – the demands of an 18-year-old that is, not a society – and they will give you a ribboned scroll at the end with 2:1 written on.

Students studying sport, media and culture at Staffordshire really were asked to read about David Beckham in 2008; computer games degree courses really do exist. If we carry on as we are, I bet there’ll be thousands more within a decade. No use in the real world, but highly attractive to a typical teenage undergraduate.

We old folk remember when a degree was a reward for study. Since the 1980s - in many cases - all it proves is that you turned up for a few lectures and got a dissertation or two in on time (and my, hasn’t the internet aided the quality of work handed in… and speed).

And the best argument of all, that university meant the teenager finally left home and learned to look after him-, or her-, self, and met new people from other walks of life has collapsed too: most kids can’t afford to go anywhere else in the country so they stay with mum and dad.

I despair. And as the parent of two teenagers due to consider uni soon, I hope I am brave enough to advise them NOT to go and waste three years on some contrived degree course.