Who says degrees are good for us all?

Back in 1976, when I was 20, I saw an ad in a Notting Hill recordshop window that really got my (easily gettable) goat. It was an ad for assistants to work in the shop flogging records. I liked music, and I needed a summer job, so I thought I might apply. I was halfway through the door when I caught sight of the caveat at the bottom of the flyer:

The proud possessor of two medium-quality A-levels, I stormed into the shop and demanded they justify their ludicrously elitist position. They told me where I could shove my A-levels and threw me out.

I realise now that the record-shop owner was ahead of his time. According to research published this week, the number of jobs requiring a degree has soared. It would logically follow that employers hold the degree in high esteem. Yet I suspect the opposite is the case.

The survey, by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, points out that, despite the demand for graduates, many of the jobs offered didn't require "graduate skills". The possession of a degree merely indicated "potential". Another survey, from the Universities of Warwick and the West of England, suggested this week that employers found other qualities such as motivation and experience count more profoundly than the quality of a degree.

Clearly as degrees become ubiquitous, it is becoming merely conventional to possess one. It is like a good grasp of English, or the ability to spell, a lump of fairly low-grade ballast on the launching pad of your career. To get one is no longer much assumed to be difficult, and therefore although the possession of a degree is not necessarily the mark of anyone being a success, the absence of one very much indicates failure.

It would be bad enough if this was simply the attitude of employers. But a letter to education guru John Clare in yesterday's Daily Telegraph suggests that it is a view that the students share.

The (anonymous) correspondent, a teacher at a "good" university, paints a picture of students routinely submitting essays bought on the internet, plagiarising and cheating. The writer complains that "hardly any of the 200 exam papers I've marked do more than regurgitate lecture notes". When students are challenged, they just "shrug and laugh it off".

This is all such a shame, and such a waste. For people like myself, and my partner, who came from ordinary backgrounds to university as mature students, the years of study were gruelling, but rewarding, because we thought we were doing something that was in itself valuable. Increasingly now though, for most students, it seems to be just a tiresome means to an economic end.

For those with a real interest in educating themselves, it can be dispiriting. Doing my degree as a mature student at the LSE was the hardest thing I've ever attempted, because I took it seriously.

Not everyone should have one, but everyone feels they are required to. Employers need to put more emphasis on life skills, experience, charisma, personality and motivation and stop worrying whether or not their applicant is carrying a piece of paper which is probably no guide to whether the holder is going to be any use to them.

So let's get off the merry-go-round now and give the universities back to those for whom they were intended - those strange yet admirable people who actually want to learn for the sake of learning.

My favourite air guitar (and Jimi's)

This week marks the 50th birthday of the Fender Stratocaster, the electric guitar favoured by, among others, Jimi Hendrix, Hank Marvin and Eric Clapton.

I could never afford a guitar of any sort when I was a kid. But when I stood in front of the mirror with my Dunlop

Maxply tennis racket, miming to Hey Joe, it was a Fender Strat I was seeing in the mirror. Sonic blue, burnished with wear, and the amp was turned up to 11.

You can deride it as a phallic symbol, you can ridicule it as adolescent, but the Fender Stratocaster is one of the most elegant objects modern design has ever contrived.

It's just a shame it stopped actually being cool the moment Tony Blair posed for photographs with his.

Face it, Jennifer, you're outclassed

I have been positively wringing my hands and twiddling my thumbs since the ending of the current series of ER and the final winding up of Friends. Where to go now for the weekly dose of neurotic singletons and bustling, and possibly busty, interns?

To my surprise and delight I have actually found the answer - amazingly on British TV. Jed Mercurio's Bodies, on BBC3, is the best medical drama I have ever seen on British TV, and it does for hospitals what Tony Garnett's Cops did for police shows. Hard-hitting, cynical, funny, sexy and completely believable.

As for a Friends substitute, again BBC3 has come up with the goods. Coupling has reached a level of sophistication that at times outclasses the US product. Its mixture of fantasy, satire and broad comedy works brilliantly, and in terms of glamour, Susan Walker (Sarah Alexander) makes Jennifer Aniston look like a frog.

This mad gamble on all our futures

Tessa Jowell's proposals to allow huge casinos into the cities of Britain sits very oddly with the Christian Socialism Tony Blair once claimed to believe in.

I'm not against gambling. I was losing my money at Chase the Ace when I was still wearing shorts. But we're not talking a few hands of cards or a flutter on the gee-gees. We're talking about the organised attempt by big business to fleece as many people as possible.

If you're in any doubt about what this means, pay a visit to Las Vegas. Take in its sumptuousness, its luxury, its extraordinary scale and its unparalleled lavishness.

Then remind yourself that every single last brick and neon light and mind-boggling themed complex of it was built on the vast losses of the gamblers that float into the city on a cloud of ludicrous dreams.

Gambling on a small scale is harmless fun. On a global, corporate level, it is recipe for mass misery. The Government, if it wants to retain any credibility at all of a moral purpose outside the blind fostering of business, should do everything it can to stop this glittering juggernaut in its tracks.

A book that can conquer death

I was delighted that Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything won the Avensis award for science writing this week.

My father, who has hitherto shown no interest in science whatsoever, read Bryson's book last year. When he'd finished it, he said the book made such an impact on him, he was no longer afraid of death.

I met Bill this year and mentioned my father's remark and he said it was the best accolade any book could hope to achieve. I think he's probably right, but if any book deserved it, it was his.