So many arguments in favour of mass university education boil down to universities doing what schools managed to do 50 years ago: socialise children into adults, provide opportunities to explore extracurricular interests, give them enough skills to be employable.

The other side of the equation is I think the romanticism of universities, and that has less to do with their inherent qualities, and more to do with the decline in the benefits, community and dignity of the employment students can expect to pursue when they leave.

For many university is the sole opportunity to pursue higher things in-between the regimentation of school life and the rigours of work. Activities that would once have been widely available - music, drama, political activism, a busy social calendar - are now less attainable.

I think a big part of the reason so many young people descend on London is not just employment - after all the cost of living is so much lower elsewhere - but rather that it so monopolises the country's social and cultural capital.