UNIVERSITIES are dishing out first class degrees apparently like sweets these days. With graduation season in full swing, we learned last week that the number of first class degrees awarded by universities has risen 60 per cent since the tripling of tuition fees - and it doesn't take an Albert Einstein (or even a Brian Epstein) to work out a direct correlation between the two.

Now, even the most ardent fan of progressive education policies would be hard put to argue that the reason so many more young people get degrees these days - and why so many now get firsts - is that we are breeding much cleverer youngsters than, say, 50 years ago.

We most certainly are not. It must all be down to better teaching, then, mustn't it? On paper, maybe. But, again, we all know that is not true, either.

Young people are now coming out of our education system (both schools and universities) with alarmingly low levels of literacy and numeracy yet with armloads of qualifications, many of which are quite literally not worth the paper they are written on.

I know of students with first-class degrees from distinctly third-rate universities, who struggle to write a coherent sentence, as any brief trawl of social media will so vividly demonstrate.

As soon as hordes of former colleges of FE and polytechnics became reclassified as universities, and from the time that tuition fees rose to £9,000 a year pretty much across the board, rampant grade inflation was utterly inevitable.

Students - who are now consumers - expected to get top degrees for their top dollars, while universities saw it as reputationally enhancing to award high levels of 2:1s and firsts to their ostensibly high-achieving students.

Of course, they were kidding no-one - but they were saddling thousands of young people with huge debts many had no chance of paying off, coupled with often entirely unrealistic ideas about their academic prowess and future employment prospects.

It is not just the bog-standard universities who are guilty of this grade inflation. Russell Group universities have also been ramping up the number of high-class degrees they are awarding. And it really needs to stop.

I did my law degree at a premier division university, and out of around 120 students in my year, just one person got a first (it wasn't me - I had to make do with a 2:1). That person was an uber-swot with a brain the size of a planet and no social life.

She's probably running the European Court of Justice by now. I didn't get a first because I hadn't earned one. I wasn't let down by poor teaching; I wasn't failed by the university - I just didn't (indeed, couldn't) raise my game to the heady heights of the first-class degree.

Of course, today I would have known better. I'd have sued the pants off my alma mater for depriving me of a first-class degree, and of the glittering career which was surely my due.

A daft idea? It certainly should be. But last week universities minister Jo Johnson (brother of Boris) waded into the university debate most unhelpfully by suggesting that disgruntled students who feel they have not been given the education they were promised should sue their universities for failing to deliver.

Contract law would be at the heart of this nonsense, with students being able to claim in breach for perceived poor teaching, for poor feedback or for too little contact time, should they fail to get the degree they feel they deserve.

In our increasingly litigious society, such a notion will no doubt prove most appealing to some snowflake students who feel cheated out of a first. On the other hand, with so many delta-brained students now getting firsts regardless of talent or aptitude, maybe the lawyers won't be kept very busy.

Frankly, this whole idea of suing for breach of contract needs turning on its head - and it should be the universities suing their dimmer students. Better still, they should sue the schools who continue to send semi-literate and semi-numerate youngsters into the university system.

TWENTY years after her untimely death, Diana, Princess of Wales, continues to fascinate.

Prince William's poignant revelation that he regrets his last phone call with his mother - hastily ended because he wanted to go and play, little realising that it would be the past time he would ever speak to her - was heartbreaking.

How that resonated with so many of us who have lost parents and loved ones; and how we all wonder what we would have said and done with those loved ones if we had known it would be for the last time.

Now, Diana's former voice coach has sold tapes of "confessions" from the princess, which are to be broadcast on Channel 4. The recordings are understood to contain footage of Diana speaking candidly about her love life - and are being broadcast because her two sons' decision to open up about their mother is deemed to have set a precedent.

The apparently "dynamite" recordings will now, inevitably, be devoured by a still Di-hungry public and press. Expect the tabloids to trot out "Di-namite!" headlines ad nauseam.

It is admirable of the princes to speak openly of their mother in this 20th anniversary year but it is less admirable of the media to view the princes' new openness as having sounded the starting gun for a Diana free-for-all.

EDUCATION secretary Justine Greening is calling for people to have the right to define as either gender (or no gender at all, of course) without any need for recourse to the medical profession - and, by association, any biological issues.

Ms Greening, who is also the equalities minister, wants trans people to be able to change their birth certificates and passports with ease to reflect the gender (or none) that they associate with.

The transgender revolution has certainly gathered pace in recent years, with trans rights becoming increasingly to the fore of political agendas across the ideological spectrum. But is Ms Greening's wish to take trans issues beyond medicine and into the area of lifestyle choice a step too far?

Southern Rail has recently ordered its announcers to stop saying "good morning ladies and gentlemen" prior to imparting the news that their train has been delayed/cancelled, in case any transgender passengers (sorry, customers) might be offended.

I can't help thinking of the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when Eric Idle's character Stan announces to a meeting of the People's Front of Judea that henceforth he wishes to be known as Loretta and have his right to have a baby respected. "It's symbolic of my struggle against oppression," Stan/Loretta tells his comrades, to which John Cleese's character Reg replies: "It's symbolic of your struggle against reality."

In all this, there is one thing we can be sure of: Life of Brian is a film that would never be allowed in today's enlightened and oh, so liberal age.