There’s no place like home. Which, for thousands of 18-year-olds, is the best reason to get out and live far away.

Even within this tiny country, landscapes and the rules of personal safety vary immensely. Country kids face roaring cities, southerners confront the industrial North, the English sample Scotland or Wales and vice versa.

Socially, university has replaced all those traditional leavings of the nest: apprenticeships, grand tours, monastic interludes and so on. Even boarding-school children find the transition unexpectedly shocking. Quite apart from the challenge of discovering how quickly food rots when left under the bed, it is often the first time that the sexual taboos of one’s parents can be discarded.

Thus the majority of 18-year-olds think they want to find a university far from home. But it can be a sign of great maturity, calm thrift and an evolved family when a student does decide to live at home and go local.

However, for ministers to make it financially irresistible has great dangers for those who honestly want to study. If poorer students feel pressure to do it, they will lose choice. If your local college does the right course, fine (some universities, such as Bradford, have seen local applicants double).

But the idea that only the rich can choose courses is appalling. Government should not save money by tossing a bone to the poor-but-bright on condition they stay in their childhood bedroom. Hardy’s Jude the Obscure may no longer have to struggle as a stonemason who reads Greek in the evenings and dreams of Oxford; but neither should he have to go to a dodgy local college just because he can walk there.

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