As Britain's teenagers eagerly await their A-level results this month, a parliamentary committee has warned that some of the universities these youngsters hope to attend may not be as good as they claim to be.
The cross-party committee of Members of Parliament which produced the report accused English universities of 'inconsistency of standards'.
They award too many top marks, thereby creating an 'inflation' in grades. Mr Phil Willis, the former head teacher who chairs the committee, urged universities to 'get real' and establish an independent watchdog to provide a true measure of their teaching performance.
Predictably, the universities responded with outrage. Ms Diana Warwick, boss of Universities UK, which represents institutions of higher learning, dismissed the criticism as 'ill-thought through' and 'made without supporting evidence'.
Unfortunately for Ms Warwick, however, the parliamentary inquiry did include a great deal of statistical evidence, all pointing to the existence of a real crisis. Yet, as is often the case in Britain, debates about education standards descend quickly into just another political battle in which facts are rarely allowed to interfere with ideological preferences.
Paradoxically, the problem has been traced to Britain's huge investment in education over the past few decades. A university system that was originally elitist expanded to accommodate the majority of those who wished to study. As late as the 1980s, only 10 per cent of Britain's youth went to university; now, 40 per cent do.
In theory, everyone applauds this development. But the snag remains that much of this expansion was achieved by eliminating the distinction between the older universities, which traditionally applied tough entry requirements, and polytechnics, originally devised for those who did less well at school. All polytechnics now call themselves universities, and most have acquired fancy new names to provide themselves with an air of ancient respectability.
To make matters worse, all these institutions are now engaged in a race to award top grades. A decade ago, only 7.7 per cent of all students gained a first in their subject, the highest possible mark; today, this figure has doubled. Furthermore, no less than half of the remaining students gain an upper second, the next-best mark.
Some academics pointed to the fact that A-level results are also getting better and that, therefore, the universities are benefiting from a flow of better students. But they conveniently forgot to add that the universities themselves regularly complain about a similar 'inflation' in A-level results.
Some universities ignored the parliamentary queries, claiming that as a record 330,000 foreigners now attend British universities, their quality is, allegedly, self-evident.
Yet this explanation remains utterly irrelevant. Foreign students could be lured to Britain on false pretences, just as domestic students may be. According to research compiled by Britain's Higher Education Institute, up to a third of the foreign students did not believe their degrees were worth the money. And, in any case, Britain is attracting larger numbers of foreign applications just because the pool of available students is growing. Overall, Britain's share of the global higher education market has actually fallen.
Ultimately, no British university addressed the real issues identified by the parliamentary inquiry: that teaching standards cannot be uniform across almost 60 different institutions, and that the grades awarded are not an absolute concept, but a relative one. If all the new students are truly excellent, then the marking system must be adjusted to account for new differences in performance; it would be silly to give most students top marks, based on an assessment which belongs to a different generation.
The problem is that, for institutions which supposedly cherish the freedom of speech, British universities remain curiously secretive. Few are prepared to reveal their marking methods.
The veil of silence seems set to continue. Oxford, Cambridge and London's various colleges have not uttered a word in the current debate, partly because they know their degrees are not questioned.
It was left to Ms Gillian Evans, a lecturer in mediaeval theology at Oxford University and an expert in university regulation, to offer an explanation: The current grade and degree inflation may simply be due to the universities' desire to move up performance league tables. Or, to put it more simply, high marks are awarded in order to attract more students and greater funding.
The silence of the universities is unlikely to last for long. Britain's Conservative Party, which is predicted to win power at the general election next year, is planning to tackle the problem in a radically different way.
The Conservatives have pledged to publish the figures that British universities dread most: Not the cumulative totals of their firsts but, rather, statistics on just how many of their graduates manage to secure permanent jobs in their chosen professions. The first results of this investigation will be published online next month.
They are unlikely to make comforting reading. A similar study by the University of Kent a decade ago showed that a third of graduates ended up in jobs that do not require any degree, with students from former polytechnics faring the worst.
Undoubtedly, educators will also dismiss this exercise as 'unsubstantiated'. But the parents of future students will surely realise that a university's employment record is far more important than the rank of the degrees it awards.
So, as Britain's establishment continues to be paralysed by the politically correct myth that all universities are equal and all students are bright, the logic of the market is still likely to provide a wake-up call.
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