As students battle to bag a place at oversubscribed colleges: Is it social death to let your teen skip university?

At dinner time we serve two kinds of wine: undergraduate wine and graduate wine. The latter is superior and only given to those who have a degree. Sometimes, on special occasions, those in the process of completing a degree are allowed some, but it is under no circumstances offered to any of our combined five children who might foolishly shun the idea of higher education.

It never occurred to me that my offspring who would choose a vocational path rather than go to uni. Why would you want to miss out on such a fabulous time? Not to mention the improved career prospects. Having worked as a head-hunter in the media industry I have seen many fabulous candidates dismissed purely on the basis that they haven’t been to university.

I was utterly dismayed when not one but two of our daughters decided, half-way through their A Levels, that education wasn’t for them. I admit there was a snobbish element involved. I used to dread friends asking what they were doing because I couldn’t bear to tell them the truth. I got so fed up trying to circumnavigate the honest response of ‘waitressing’ or ‘dog walking’ that at one point I thought I might just lie and say that while one was reading law at Oxford, the other one was studying medicine at Cambridge. A particular low point came when one of my daughters was recognised (we look very similar) by an old university chum she was waitressing for at a private dinner.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against menial work, but there must be a point to it. Waitressing is something you do while you’re studying. It’s not a career. I wouldn’t be in favour of an apprenticeship either. If we’d wanted our children to become plumbers or electricians, we wouldn’t have spent every penny we had on private education, although come to think of it, a company of posh plumbers might do rather well.

By not going to university a person hugely limits his or her options, which is why we have always been so insistent.

Everyone wants to give their child the best possible start in life, and a university education is just that. It’s a (relatively) safe place to bridge the gap between childhood and adulthood, it’s great fun and they might learn something too.

I’m happy to say I no longer cringe when people ask me what the girls are doing because they’re finally at university. Although I do sometimes question their motivation. I overheard one of them being asked recently why she decided to return to her studies. ‘I want to drink better wine,’ came the reply.