THE number of students from Swindon attending Britain’s top 30 universities is among the lowest in the country, according to the latest figures from the folk who compile such things.

As if that were not worrying enough, only 28 percent of Swindonians are currently in higher education, against a national average of 34 percent.

These revelations have led to much head scratching among various officials.

The last time I looked, they’d yet to come up with a definitive answer as to why we’re so under-represented at these esteemed seats of learning.

It can’t be because we’re lacking in brainpower. That argument might hold water if we produced a disproportionate amount of the nation’s celebrity magazine cover stars or public utility senior executives, but we don’t.

What we do produce disproportionate amounts of are people who end up doing things like designing space probes and building really fiddly bits of nano-technology, so it’s a fair bet that we’re not overburdened by people whose IQs are outstripped by their hat sizes.

So why are so few of our young people at the top universities? Why are so few at any university?

Well, maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but could it be something to do with the fact that we’re the largest town in the country that doesn’t have a university within 30 miles? Could it be because nobody has got around to rectifying this situation properly in the almost 115 years since Queen Victoria declared us a borough?

Admittedly the closest is probably Oxford, one of our best universities, but with one or two exceptions nobody gets in there unless their entire life was bought and paid for before Mummy and Daddy even got them home from the private maternity hospital.

Should you happen to be an Oxbridge graduate from an ordinary background who’s minded at this point to accuse me of making sweeping generalisations, I ask only this: tell me what percentage of your classmates had chins.

While you’re at it, tell me what percentage of the classmates who didn’t have chins kept in touch after graduation.

None? That’s because you’re not one of them – and possibly because they’ve been too busy wrecking the country these last 10 years or so.

(Incidentally, they probably called you “oik” or “prole” behind your back and sneered at you for using the wrong implement to eat cornflakes on a Tuesday or whatever.) Hang on, I just need to take a pill.

Back now.

Where was I? Oh yes, university provision in Swindon.

The lack of a university means too many of our young people lack student role models.

In other towns and cities, the ones with universities, young people see students and aspire to be students.

“That looks like fun,” they say to themselves. “I too want to discuss philosophy and politics in a really loud voice, and be able to have a strange haircut because no power-crazed head teacher or boss can tell me otherwise.

“I too want to seek out bands so obscure that their own mothers haven’t heard of them, and later shun them and call them sellouts as soon as they develop a following any larger than the capacity of a single-decker bus.”

It is in this way that potential doctors, teachers and other vital folk become actual doctors, teachers and other vital folk, and we are missing out.

A good way to avoid not having a university is to build one.

A good way to avoid having a project to build a university coming unstuck is to ensure everybody involved has a sincere desire to build a university and nothing else.

A good way of weeding out those who have other agendas is to look out for comments such as: “And by the way we’d also like to build a dirty great housing estate.”