Hungry for Learning?

One often has cause to wonder (not least from the responses he stimulates) what perceptions of higher education the Oxford P.P.E. graduate Peter Mandelson acquired in his undergrad. days. Presumably he was unimpressed, or uncomprehending...

School leavers applying to English universities will get more data about courses under government plans to treat them more like consumers.

A food labelling-style system will flag up teaching hours, career prospects and seminar frequency, says the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

It's almost as though fees were already high enough actually to cover the costs of teaching. Data on career prospects are already available; standardised quantitative data about contact hours will I'm afraid be of limited use to people who have yet to experience study at any university, although on the positive side this development might discourage any further pressure to get them cut. 'A food labelling-style system', though, as the B.B.C. characterises it...? I can see right now how it isn't going to look:

• 022% liberation from unexamined commonplace assumptions
• 010% systematic knowledge of the Right and the Good
• 019% outright scepticism
• 028% rational enquiry into the nature of reality
• 007% Nietzsche
• 014% increasingly sophisticated forms of perplexity
• 100% love of wisdom

Warning: contains high levels of anxiety, low levels of political comprehension.