I'm a teacher, but I don't understand the obsession with university

As Thursday’s A-level results loom, the frenzy remains: university or bust . I will be back at school in my sixth-form tutor role, supporting those who didn’t quite make the grade, helping any stressed pupils and parents negotiate UCAS’s knotty clearing system.

Meanwhile, outside on the lawn, the luckier ones will celebrate. Before we hit the phones in search of an alternative university, it’s worth contemplating: when did going become so unquestionable? Higher education was not always a baked-in, cultural rite of passage. So why – given the cost , the mental health challenges and no guaranteed entry into the job market – are we still obsessed with getting a degree?

Before Tony Blair’s reforms in 1998, university was largely funded by local authorities – or free at the point of entry