Giles Coren
The man, the films, those blondes. Free DVD collection starting this Sunday
There is still a month to go until the A-level results come out (plenty of time to dye your hair blonde and have a boob job so you can get your picture on the front of The Daily Telegraph squealing over a stunt envelope), and already I'm reading all the usual guff about inequality in the university entrance systems.
“The spread of individual university entrance exams, the arrival of the A*, and the proliferation of new qualifications...” The Guardian claims, “make this a very uneven playing field.”
In short, everyone will get straight As as usual and so universities will have to find other ways of discriminating between identical candidates. These methods will (inevitably) be class-biased, and once again there won't be very many poor people going to Oxford or Cambridge.
Boring. Borrrrrrrrring. Boring, boring, boring. I am so fed up with being made to feel guilty for getting into Oxford only because I went to a school that gave me a posh voice, fluent conversational Latin, three top hats and a brief friendship with the eldest son of the Earl of Sandwich. Even if it's true. I'm just booooooored with it.
So I've come up with a solution - ban public schoolboys from going to university altogether.
The truth is that if you go to a half-decent private school you arrive at university knowing as much as you're going to need to pass a modern university exam anyway (only this week, staff at Manchester Metropolitan University were told to start ramping up exam marks to bring the place up to the national average of providing firsts and upper seconds for fully 60 per cent of candidates).
As a result, public school kids spend at least two years waiting for the “less fortunate” kids to get up to where they were at 15. Far better to get out into the workplace and start earning money than to borrow it from the Government so you can spend three years getting drunk and going to parties, smoking dope and falling out of windows until, at the end of it all, you are as thick as everyone else.
This will be good for the underprivileged students, too. Because it is not much fun for them arriving at college in their flat caps, smelling of stale beer and roll-ups, and finding themselves outclassed by a lot of pink-faced twonks in straw boaters. That's why they so often go into their shells and end up wearing black and listening to The Fall and not looking people in the eye. If the posh kids weren't there, they would be able to shine.
It's not like the banned public schoolboys would be missing out on anything worthwhile. After all, if you have been at an OK public school then you've already had at least five years of living in grand old buildings with good libraries, being taught by teachers who respect your opinions. How much more of that do you need? If you have too much, you end up like Boris Johnson or David Cameron, having to get fat and pretend to be stupid just so people won't be afraid of you.
University can make a bright young mind complacent. Get a top-class degree from Oxford or Cambridge (by falling off a log) and you feel you have nothing left to prove. But look at chaps like
A.A. Gill and Jonathan Meades, two of our cleverest writers, neither of whom went to university but learnt all the clever stuff they know by themselves.
As a result, they try much harder to get that clever stuff into their writing, which contributes to our huge reading pleasure. A chap who proved all that stuff years ago doesn't really bother, and just churns out any old guff, I'd imagine.
For universities merely to look a bit more favourably on state school kids where possible is not enough. It will never effect the social revolution that we all crave. We must take a sledgehammer to crack this particular social nut.
The modern university, a place for drinking and shagging and getting a top-class degree as a reward for remembering to wear clothes to the exams, is a waste of time if you have been educated properly already. Far better to get out early with your
37 As and go straight into a job, where you can set about feathering your nest, employing your buddies and making sure there are no jobs left for the oiks when they finally come down from Oxford.

Staying with education, The Times on Thursday reported a suggestion from Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, that exam candidates aged 6 or 7 could be saved from stress if they weren't told that they were being tested - an idea so hilarious one wonders if someone had tried to de-stress Mr Balls by not telling him he was the Schools Secretary. I wouldn't be surprised if he were that thick - he was at the same Oxford college as me and I'm so daft you could nail a mouse to my forehead and I wouldn't know till Tuesday.

There was a column by David Cameron on these pages on Thursday. I read it. And I would just like to say to Mr Cameron, as one Times columnist to another, you muffed it.
When I have a column to write in The Times, I sweat over it a bit. I try to come up with an original idea, and then to convey it in sentences that have a bit of zip.
You, you just turn it over to some gap-toothed flunky at Central Office who simply rolls out the old manifesto clichés and proves the very point that you were trying to rebut - that you have nothing to say.
I practically gagged when I read all that “Let me start by saying...” and “Let me give you two examples...” stuff. This is The Times, matey, not a speech to the Eastbourne Conservative Ladies' Club. You're supposed to write in prose. “Let me just...” “Let me just...” It read like Tony Blair barging his way to the front of a bus queue.You asked five - count them, five - rhetorical questions in the space of 800 words, and then answered them yourself. It sounded like a bag lady wibbling to herself in the aisle at Asda.
And then all the techie stuff: “The information revolution can give real power and control to individuals...” Heavens to Betsy, a portly Etonian in his forties finally gets his iPod working and he thinks that he's Bill Gates.
“Google can tell us more about our illness than doctors,” you wrote. Surely you don't really think that? You couldn't possibly. Or that “social networking can drive the environmental agenda”?
Come on, David. Social networking is for young people who want to screw. They get to know each other on these sites and then they meet up and hump each other, that's all. They're not driving any agendas.
One thing I did admire, however, was your effortless coining of hip phrases to define the Zeitgeist, like when you talked about “what I call the post-bureaucratic age”. So catchy. Iron Age, Jazz Age, Space Age. Post-Bureaucratic Age.
Ooh, this Tory revolution is going to be sexy.

Giles Coren has been a columnist for The Times since 1999. He began as a feature writer before becoming restaurant critic in 2001. His reviews appear in The Times Magazine on Saturdays
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I've been mulling over the idea that education and testing should be provided by very separate institutions. The former by schools and government, and the latter by industries and their employers. That would quickly put an end to useless "education".
Loco, London, UK
Very good! Public schools and good universities have always been about networking, the education is secondary. I have taught in public school and state school and this is the most obvious difference - that and pushy parents!
Natalie, Colchester,
I agree with you on some of the issues you raised, but I Love Learning I did go to a public school, there not amazing too focused on stats, but I am more self educated my self I spend hours on end leaning things not relevant to anything at school, exams at GCSE are too easy by far, A2 are Ok
samuel, Leeds, England
I went to two useless state schools - they were education light - I didn't know how important this was until I left - Where does my daughter go to school? Well put it this way I dont care if she doesn't go to university!
WB, Liverpool, England
No, Dave. *Everyone* should "speak nice". I work for a multinational; what use is an Englishman who only speaks with such a strong accent that no foreigner can understand him? E.g. Italians have their local dialects but can speak "proper" Italian too, for outsiders. No communication, no future
Tim, London, UK
Any talented working-class kid with an ounce should attend a provincial red-brick university and resist all pressure to speak nice.
The result? We might catch up with our neighbours, where class and privilege (not to mention ridiculous eccents) were flushed out decades, sorry, centuries ago.
Dave, Tokyo, Japan
I found this article extremely degrading, and in fact, rather childish.
But then again, I am a mere oik. I'd probably need a fur coat and a rich daddy before I could possibly comprehend the sheer sophistication of your rapier-like wit.
Michelle, Gloucester, England
So a young man from the North of England go's down to London to get a job in the City, without knowing anyone or without any establishment friends to earn his fortune.
Just like Dick Whittington this is a fairy tale.
While I agree with the writers sentiments it is still "Who you know" -pity.
mikek, Liverpool, UK
In my experience as a state school undergraduate in the eighties I found many public school educated students to be rather thick. They seemed to get good degrees, though, which proves intelligence and education are two very different things.
Boris Johnson should be seen as an example of this.
John, LONDON, ENGLAND
It seems to me that little Master Giles aka Gregor Samsa has a problem with guilt.
Neil, Essen, Germany
An excellent column. Times editor please note we need more of Giles Coren.
Gill, London,
The thinking man's Clarkson.
John, Lancaster, UK
You'd know this if you hadn't been to Oxford.
James , Canberra, Australia.
Yes, I only look in the mirror on a Tuesday too.
Mike Sadler, Doha, Qatar
Now I KNOW Giles Coren is joking because everyone I know who went to private or public school did dismally in their A levels and could not get a place at university if their life depended on it. Thank goodness they had daddy's millions to fall back on!
Liz, Inverness, UK
Another one, Giles, that your Dad would be proud of. Congrats!
Michael, London, UK
Giving away 1st Class Honours degrees like sweeties devalues the degrees which were hard earned in the 50s, 60s and 70s in the same way that today's inflation (I mean real inflation, not Gordon Browns CPI fallacy) devalues our life savings. Real values have disappeared for ever. Nu-Labour!!!
Richard, Alicante, Spain
6 years ago after graduating with a BEng 2:1, I managed to make it to the last phase of recruitment for Rolls Royce.
2 years ago after completing an MSc I was no longer eligble to even apply as my GCSEs were now not high enough.
Has grade inflation make my MSc less valuable than a GCSE?
Nathan, Maputo, Mozambique
Do people like this still really exist?
Howard Gethin, Moscow, Russia
"Post-Bureaucratic Age", huh? If only! Unfortunately, the Age of Bureaucracy is just getting into its stride. Like entropy, bureaucracy only ever increases. Which means that all of us have to pay more and more money for all those salaries, and time to fill in all those forms (in quintuplicate).
Tom Welsh, Basingstoke,
My dear Giles, one doesn't dye their hair blonde, one bleaches it. I'm from a Northern w/c background and have just graduated with a first ma -funded by scholarship - without otherwise I'd still be working for le argos in le dump. Class Discrimination, fortunately got me my degree. Bring it on I say
Samantha, Kendal, Cumbria
By the time I left university, I had acquired 12 O-Levels, 2 x E-grade A-Levels, and a 2.2 Degree. That was in 1980. I walked into a job and have been paid well ever since. I was also considered, at the time, to be in the top 2% of society's educated. How times have changed.
DLL, Brussels,
Beware revenge of the dumblies Apply by letter to a Guardian advertised admin job with a good education, English A level, and a 2.1 Russell university degree and you may not even be considered. The required qualification, which you did not meet, was an NVQ in letter writing
R . Khanna, London UK ,
There is lots of chat from the left about inequality of entrance to university. Why are people not JUMPING UP AND DOWN about the fact that our system sends approx 100,000 less boys to university than girls? Oh I forgot, equality only applies in favour of women!
Simon, York, England
Oh your column is brilliant! I need more of this!!!
vp, london,
Bit a problem when all graduate programmes need a degree with a 2.1 or better to get in. No degree, no job nowdays. (no good one at least)
Colin, Nottingham,
Cameron was writing for the masses - not Times columnists. He is quite entitled at this stage of the electoral cycle to play politics rather than offer concrete policy. Because the latter won't do him any good. Governments lose elections. Oppositions don't win them.
James , Canberra, Australia.
Good stuff, give me more.
M Wilson, Bidache, france
From a sevetyeight year old retired physician. Thank you for your sanity Mr. Coren. I didn't know there was anyone like you left in the newspapar world.
Ton Marus, Erith, Kent
We all know a degree is now a basic minimum education. Keep the classes seperated by only allowing the wealthy to gain the qualifications to be able to enter the workforce at anything above the basic services level. Good on you! Not everyone wastes their undergrad time at uni, even if you did!
sharyn, Grantville, Australia
I have just finished my A-Levels and I would be more than happy to go out and get a job if there was opportunity for progression. Employers want graduates just to make themselves feel more secure. I find myself going to uni just to be able to say in my CV that i'm a graduate.
Sam, London,
A prole salutes you. Well said.
Brett, Salford, UK