I sat my A-levels 15 years ago. Following a satisfactory set of results, I went off to university during the great expansion of higher education in the mid-2000s. Until then going to university was not something that people like me – lower middle class and living in a down-at-heel provincial town – usually did, at least not in significant numbers.
That changed during the New Labour years when Tony Blair set a target for 50 per cent of young people to go to university. Soon enough I was infected by a wave of possibility that came with expanded horizons. The mood music in my head changed: maybe, just maybe, there was “room at the top” after all.
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