“I do sometimes think that higher education is wasted on the young. It’s about the privelege of spending three years exercising your brain in something you are really interested in. If you’ve made the wrong decision it might not give you the best outcome. My message is that schools need to focus on helping students think about these decisions in a lot of detail and not rush them based on what your parents think or what your mates are doing.”

– Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (in Britain), in a speech to head teachers, May, 2014