If you ask me...I have the perfect university for you A-Level students

If you ask me, I would, obviously, wish to congratulate those A‑level students who have achieved their desired grades, and would also wish to congratulate the 385,910 who have secured a university place.

Well done! This is the first step to leaving behind your youth, to boldly embarking on adult life and then, chances are, moving back in with the parents.

So I would ask: instead of going to Manchester or Warwick or Durham, have you considered enrolling at a new institution? The University of Nowhere Fast, with its remit to prepare graduates for getting nowhere fast? And the future that may actually await them, now the bankers have run away with all our money?

The University of Nowhere Fast was established in response to a government report which concluded that “today’s graduates are totally unsuited to becoming unproductive citizens who are likely to sit around on their arses all day”. And it further added: “After a degree from a regular university, many graduates completely fail to leave with their expectations dashed and their ambitions shattered, despite being up to £60,000 in debt.”

If you enrol at the University of Nowhere Fast, your first year, the foundation year, will cover all the necessary basic skills for getting nowhere fast. These include: sitting around, lying about, scrabbling down the back of sofas for any loose change, consuming unhealthy snack products, and not following up on any job applications when you don’t hear back, as what’s the point?

Once the basics are mastered, the second year will build on the first by introducing students to the joyless slog of unpaid internships, getting up at around 2pm, killing time by watching American sitcoms you’ve seen hundreds of times before, and accepting that, for you, ascending to even the first rung of the property ladder is up there with ascending Jacob’s Ladder, but markedly less probable.

The third and final year will bring it all together while teaching yet more sophisticated techniques for getting though the day, like shifting from the sofa, but only to hide when the landlord turns up to demand the sort of rip-off rents that can be charged when social housing is an impossibility. Alternatively, if you are living back at home, you will learn how to be nice to your mother because, seriously, none of this is her fault; she didn’t invent capitalism, and she didn’t expect you to become a lying around, unproductive citizen either. Truly, she didn’t.

So, enrol, and enrol today, and if you don’t hear back, please don’t pester the university with calls as to the progress of your application, or to reiterate how perfect you would be. You will only show yourself up as completely unsuited to getting nowhere fast, if you do.

Twitter: @deborahross