I have often alluded here to my indifference or downright hostility towards national education stories compared to flesh and blood stories concerning actual, individual people. This goes way beyond logic, for national statistics are not always lies, and often reveal big events even if not with the accuracy they suggest. But my attitude towards national education statistics is, basically, that I'm against them. The government knowing the national picture concerning the state of this or that variable is inextricably intertwined with the government seeking to control that aspect of the picture.

The ongoing ruckus concerning the admissions policies of the various faculties of Bristol University is all mixed up with a national government effort first to count, and then to increase, the number of non-posh people going to university.

Margaret Hodge, the Higher Education Minister, has already told universities that they will be set new targets for increasing recruitment of teenagers from low-income homes and where neither parent went to university. They will also have to give special consideration to applicants from schools with a history of poor results. But she was forced by Mr Clarke into an embarrassing climb-down on Monday from a plan to set a specific target for increasing the proportion of working-class students at university by 2010.

That's from the front page (top right) of today's Times, paper version, which is to say that it's a big row. Posh schools are threatening to steer their best pupils away from Bristol, and are generally getting on their high horses and blowing their trumpets, which of course they are perfectly entitled to do.

The Mr Clarke in the quote above is the Minister of Education, and I get the impression that he isn't nearly as posh in his background as Margaret Hodge is. If that's right, then it's the posh one who wants anti-posh quotas, while the non-posh one isn't so bothered. That often the way. The people at the top of the ladder turn around and meddle with it. People half way up just want the thing to stay still.

I've already explained here why I think that Bristol University has a point in pursuing somewhat anti-posh entrance policies. I have also explained that I am opposed to the government imposing any policy from the centre, however sensible it might seem, pro-posh, anti-posh or of any other kind. What started out as a scheme to avoid neglecting bright kids from bad schools who would, if given a chance, do very well at university, is all too likely, if administered from the centre, to degenerate into a scheme that fills universities with proletarian dullards and excludes the brightest and best of all classes. So it's a good thing that Margaret Hodge is getting a roasting, and that when the dust has settled, the universities will probably continue to go their own ways. That is as it should be.

Bristol University is extremely untypical of Britain's universities in general in that they have publicly stated that they are skewing their system in favour of lower class students of high promise, and against those they see as the pampered posh. I don't know if this is what I would do if I were running a university, but that's not the point. The point is that each university should be allowed to pick its own students, and to be as public as it likes in saying how it does this.

But what if actually the Margaret Hodges of this world (by which I mean Britain) are actually winning this argument? What if Bristol is but the public tip of a vast private iceberg of anti-posh animus, with universities everywhere all refusing to accept the bright posh ones, while calmly denying in public that they are doing any such thing?

If the British government does make this policy stick, it would be interesting to speculate what the consequences for the country might be.

The assumption behind most discussions of this kind is that Britain's universities are places of unalterable and unchallengeable excellence, and the only question is who shall be permitted to bask in their glow. But what if our universities are driven into a state of collective decline by policies such as this, and by many other equally dictatorial arrangements concerning other matters, such as there being enough lady professors and students, and enough ethnic professors and students, and so on? What if a job at a university or a university degree becomes an indelible mark of mediocrity? What if our brightest and best were to start going straight from their teens into Real Life? At present these people spend about five more years being trained to be academics. In Real Life this means being trained as a paper shuffler, otherwise known as a bureaucrat.

I suspect that what would be considered very bad for the universities could turn out extraordinarily well for the country.

Proposed theory for discussion. When Britain's universities have been regarded as doing well, Britain has declined. When Britain's universities have been a corrupt and philistine shambles, Britain has raced ahead. Discuss.