PRIME minister Theresa May wants teenagers to think twice before embarking upon a university degree course - and to consider more vocation-based, technical courses instead.

Good for her. Anyone who manages to halt the daft march towards university for half the young population is to be applauded, for, frankly, there are far too many students in the university system who shouldn't be there at all.

New Labour were at the root of the drive to get as many young people as possible into our universities. Yes, it did wonders for the unemployment statistics to have hundreds of thousands of youngsters heading off to the groves of academe rather than to the job centre - but as a social experiment, it has surely failed.

The cost of tertiary education alone should be enough to put sensible teenagers - and their families - off the prospect of blindly heading towards "uni". Far too many reasonably bright but not actually very academic people are coming out of our universities with vast student debts, dubious degrees and inflated expectations of what the working world has to offer.

It is now a quarter of a century since the old polytechnics became universities, and since provincial technical colleges all but disappeared. It's time for them to return.

The prime minister this week launched her industrial strategy during a cabinet away day in Warrington. Part of this strategy is that young people should have access to the polys and the tech colleges of old; institutions which provided solid teaching and training for the less academically able school leavers who were bright and ambitious and who understood the importance of employability.

Universities are wonderful places, stretching the minds of our brightest and providing degrees of real worth. Or at least, that's what they should be. Over the past 25 years - and particularly in the last decade - too many inferior universities have been established which provide a poor experience for the students paying inflated fees for the privilege of being there. There is a world of difference between a first in classics from King's College Cambridge and a first in childcare, equine management or golf course design from the University of West Kidderminster (which may, for all I know, actually exist). While the latter three subjects are all of value in their own way, there is no need for them to be degree subjects. No-one needs a degree in childcare or mucking out stables - and certainly no-one should be paying £9,000 a year to learn the finer arts of nappy-changing or tack-cleaning.

Mrs May's intimation of a return to technical colleges and polytechnic-style further education is to be welcomed. We live in a fast-changing world where our young people need to develop different skills sets from the generations that preceded them. Technological advances are almost breathtaking in their rapidity; and the students of tomorrow need to be on courses and in colleges which best equip them to meet the challenges ahead.

High-skilled - and high-paid - jobs in the future will depend on a shift to digital and technical knowledge and know-how; and these are best acquired in technical colleges and in on-the-job training, not in third-rate universities offering inferior degrees which all too often turn out to be not worth the paper they are written on. We have not as a society become more academic over the past 25 years. We've certainly not become cleverer. So there is no need to force half of our young population into a university system which at certain levels is little more than a breeding ground for the "snowflake generation" of students who demand "safe places", trigger warnings about "uncomfortable" subject matter and who wish to rewrite history to eradicate any references to any country's past.

I recently read of a group of university students at the School of African and Oriental Studies in London demanding that they should not have to study the works of any white philosophers. Instead of "snowflake students", we need young adults becoming experts in key industries. We need youngsters to be given excellent grounding in science and technology. We need youngsters coming out of school and into technical colleges and on to apprenticeship schemes which will lead to rich and meaningful careers. Bring back the polytechnics and technical colleges, for we need them now more than ever before.

NEVER mind Donald Trump having access to the nuclear code - a far greater threat to mankind has this week been identified. The Food Standards Agency has decreed that crisp roast potatoes may have the potential to cause cancer. Nothing scientifically proven in this, incidentally, but I bet it won't be long before bags of maris pipers come adorned with photos of disease-ridden stomachs.

Needless to say, there has been an outcry over this latest bit of killjoy bunkum. We Brits will stand for a lot, but woe betide the government agency that tries to stand between us and our roast spuds. Pubs are up in arms at this insidious threat to their Sunday roast trade - and well they might be.

I staged my own protest on Monday evening by making a roast chicken dinner, complete with fluffy, crispy roast potatoes and (because it's not just spuds the FSA has in its sights) roast parsnips. And I tell you what - I went out of my way to go against the FSA's warning not to make roast potatoes fluffy (which apparently increases the surface area and thus makes death by cancer even more possible). It was one of my best ever roast dinners. Death by roast potato: I can think of few better ways to go.

TEN per cent of the population, according to research by insurance company Aviva, do not own a single book - while the average household contains eight internet-linked devices.

Frankly, I'm surprised the statistics regarding books are so low. Bookshelves seem to have become an obsolete feature of people's houses. As an avid trawler of estate agents' websites, I find it incredible how many photos of people's sitting rooms feature shelves of DVDs but rarely any books.

I get tired of people boasting that they "never have time to read". Rubbish. If you've got time to watch telly or waste hours on social media, then you've got time to read. My own house contains no fewer than eight stuffed-to-the-gunwales bookcases, along with random heaps of books in attic cupboards. That's on top of the four Kindles (I feel a modern-day Two Ronnies sketch coming on) my husband and I own between us, containing hundreds more titles.

Books are among the greatest symbols of a civilised society. People have died to uphold the freedom to read. Let's not sacrifice that freedom at the altar of the internet.