Mark O’Brien: A First from the University of Life is a true achievement

But instead of “a game of two halves” and “all to play for”, it’s about being “a motivated self-starter” who enjoys “working in a team”, or having “an enquiring mind” with “a genuine passion” for the industry and the role.

For more and more employers in recent years, another of those phrases has been “a university degree or equivalent”.

As last year’s students graduated, it was reported that as many as three quarters of employers require applicants to have been awarded or predicted at least a 2:1 grade. With an average 83 applicants for every graduate job this year, that proportion may well be even greater.

Even as the numbers of students heading to university has increased inexorably, those small letters at the end of a graduate’s name say a great deal about their bearer.

A degree in any arts or science discipline requires three or more years of patient effort and dedication, harnessing and building skills in communication, working alone and within a group – just as the university experience promotes independence, self-sufficiency and self-confidence. The letters “BA” are short for much more than merely “Bachelor of Arts”.

Yet the demand specifically for graduates with a strong degree score suggests a profound belief among employers in the skills that can be inculcated by a university course. And this is troublingly wishful thinking.

Even a moderately intensive degree course does not produce the kind of balanced, well-rounded people that graduate recruiters claim to target. An undergraduate degree moreover can never be anything other than a superficial gloss on a vast and indeed endless academic discipline.

Students are supervised by tutors who themselves will typically have selected their discipline while merely a teenager – before spending year after cloistered, monastic year researching their narrow field, writing journal articles and book chapters which in turn they place on their students’ reading lists.

Even students at elite universities fail to enjoy the kind of rounded educative experience they crave, apart from what they carve out for themselves. At Oxford and Cambridge, every term brings countless examples of undergraduates hauled before the authorities and disciplined for taking on extra-curricular projects which their tutors think may be taking time from their academic work.

At school, joining a sports team playing in the orchestra or taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme is broadly encouraged. At prestigious universities, they are met with caution at best and hostility at worst.

To your tutor, you are there to work and work and work – but only at your chosen subject, reading and regurgitating other scholars and their dusty, misread volumes. An undergraduate degree is perhaps no more than a traineeship in how to become a solid academic.

Perhaps employers only demand a strong academic record because ultimately it looks good, rather than because of any skills or real-world training it may have provided. There is a cultural caché about a good degree from a respected institution. “She got a First from Cambridge” will always be uttered with reverence – even if she spent three years nervously avoiding human contact beyond the librarian, and was brought to a nervous breakdown grasping for a few extra marks on her finals paper.

Indeed, there is a host of blue-chip firms offering opportunities in eye-wateringly lucrative paths such as consulting or banking which target graduates only at Oxbridge and London because of the prestige attached to their respective brand names.

This elitist mentality is to the detriment of thousands of graduates in more vocational fields, who have substantial skills, budding talent, and have enjoyed a more rounded life experience. The snobbery which still lingers against vocational or apparently undemanding “Mickey Mouse” degree courses at less prestigious and less historic institutions instantly casts a stigma on so many promising students who could achieve so much.

The demand among employers for graduates most clearly excludes all those school-leavers whose potential has been stifled and neglected by formal education. Stories of winners such as Sir Richard Branson and Sir Alan Sugar who carved their own path without any graduate scheme may be rare, but they demonstrate the possibilities of those outside the now seemingly mandatory university background. A First from the University of Life is a true achievement.

As the cost of a degree rises dramatically for the vast majority of prospective graduates, school-leavers have to consider their future more seriously than ever.

And as they begin to see new and exciting possibilities, so too must recruiters look beyond the blinkered premium we place on a prestigious university degree and appreciate the potential for creativity, new ideas and sheer energy among those who haven’t paid for those shibboleth-like letters at the end of their names.