There is, to my mind, supposed to be a categorical distinction between A-Level education and University level education in that in the former, you are still taught - albeit to a much higher level than in all preceding stages of secondary education - but in the latter, you are not ‘taught’ at all - you are questioned and guided but YOU do the teaching: from your own research and reading and ideas and thoughts, to yourself and your peers while the lecturer or the seminar tutor oversees the process.

And yet… This is actually the case in very few contemporary university courses it seems to me.

My conclusion is: the academic atmosphere I have described could not continue if the university entrant numbers were to go up so university education has turned into ‘post-A-Level’ education.

This is not, to my mind, what university level education was intended or has the potential to be - and the current prevailing system is to everyone’s detriment: to employers, to professors, to the students themselves and to society at large.