Nick Clegg, Universities and Social Mobility

Nick Clegg, famous alumni of exclusive Westminster School, wants universities to widen access to those who didn't go to a famous public school. It's a campaign full of fraught joys, from poking fun at Mr.Clegg's own privileged background, to damning the universities for daring to dumb down their entrance requirements, to quite properly demanding a return to grammar schools in all areas to give social mobility a bit of meaning. As ever, the Economist's university educated Bagehot is on hand to put things in perspective, including the insight that universities have always been prepared to give lower offers to pupils from tough comprehensives. Makes a change from the boring, predictable, dull but well prepared public school toffs. Which leaves the grammar school boys and girls where, exactly?