The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper

AS the pictures fade of the annual rite of 18-year-olds hugging each other in ecstasy over their A-level successes as pass rates rose for the 17th year running, it seems that at last the concomitant notion of the country's youngsters getting increasingly clever is about to get its long-overdue debunking by the "real" universities.

The dressed-up polytechnics may be happily soaking up much of the bloated A-level bunch on worthless courses such as Golf Studies and Media Studies and colleges are slashing their entrance requirements to two "E" grades to attract students, or, more precisely, the revenue they bring.

However, it is forecast that top universities will soon introduce their own examinations to find the truly brighter students.

But does this not tell us that the "gold standard" A-levels have been made too easy.

This is because the blend of the prizes-for-all egalitarism that grips today's teaching and the political manipulation that sees the increasing numbers in higher education - more than trebled in 20 years - is a neat way of buying the votes of youngsters and proud parents and keeping the dole figures down at the same time?

When the top-drawer universities have to resort to a rival exam of their own to sort the wheat from the chaff and to maintain standards, you don't need an A-level in gumption to know that the devaluation of qualifications has gone too far.

Those deluded kids happily hugging each other last week are being cheated.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.