Brown government is academic

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will go on the lunchtime news to announce that England is to be turned into a University. In a bold step designed to improve educational qualifications in England, the Prime Minister has decided to make everyone of voting age an 'undergraduate'. It is thought that by doing away with entry requirements, the English will overnight become the most highly educated people in the world. The bid for 100% university attendance has come in the wake of an unprecedented scramble for degree places and despite a record number of A-grade 'A' levels. Labour which once promised to achieve 50% University attendance has been accused by Sally Hunt of the Lecturers Union of 'rationing hope', and permanently capping 'the ambitions of thousands of potential students. The Prime Minister announced: "This is the perfect solution. As we all know a lot of the degrees that would have made up the 50% quota were of the 'mickey mouse' variety - such as David Beckham Studies or Golf Management (Staffordshire University and Birmingham respectively). So we might as well go the whole way and simply make everybody an undergraduate. Effectively they will become undergraduates of the 'University of Life,' to use the technical speak. When asked how exactly students would graduate from this University, Mr Brown answered, "Well of course there will have to be some kind of system for graduating, but this will be very straightforward and not hard to achieve... They will just be minor things such as buying an ID card, swearing allegiance to, and joining the Labour party and a short theory test on 'saving the world'. The comment on 'joining the Labour Party' did raise a few eyebrows at the press conference, which Brown swiftly dealt with. "No one need worry about joining the Labour Party. In fact it will cost undergraduates nothing. One of the first very generous acts of this government will be to offer free Labour Party membership to all undergrads, exclusive of background."