'We will soon have no world-class universities left in this country. Oxford and Cambridge struggle to retain a position among the top 10; I expect that they will soon drop out through the bottom....The concept of learning, the acquisition of knowledge and the exercise of creative imagination within the constraints of evidence and reason, has been almost fatally devalued....

[U]niversities [are] overwhelmed by the number of A grades, but ... the possession of an A grade is no guarantee that its possessor can write intelligibly, read critically or think analytically. More than 15 years ago, Cambridge was finding that an A grade in pure mathematics did not mean that a student could understand the concepts involved in even first-term undergraduate work unless he or she had a fortnight of intensive pre-term preparation. A-levels have long been inadequate as a means of selection for university. But to make A-levels more difficult would be to create an intellectual elite. Not everyone could succeed and this would be unthinkable in the present political climate.

This abhorrence of an elite lies at the very heart of our educational troubles, first at school, then at university. Yet how could we possibly hope that our universities might become world class if we did not think that they were elitist? Most rational people would accept, as a matter of manifest fact, that not everyone can be a Nobel Prize winner. But though they accept that, they then go on, half-automatically, to suggest that everyone should be given the chance to become a laureate.

This is morally unexceptionable, but does not mean that everyone should go to university. It means, rather, that everyone from the age of five should be given an education that enables them to exercise their exceptional talents, if such they have. This, in turn, entails that if there are those who show academic prowess, they should be given the tools, such as a command of language and rational argument, with which they can progress, and they should sit examinations, success in which will prove to the world that they are good at their work.'