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I couldn't go to university, so I started work on the bottom rung at a little accountancy firm, on £50 per week. But I worked hard, established my own practices and other businesses - and now I'm worth 100m, 703rd in The Sunday Times Rich List. I'd guess most of my contemporaries who got to college went on to graduate-training courses and are now simply middle managers shuffling bits of paper. Not one entrepreneur I can think of completed a degree. Think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell - all college dropouts. My belief is that people are inherently good in business, but university sucks this ability out of you.

University courses have evolved to suit very specific interests, particularly in recent years. Kids leave school and spend three years doing a comfy but narrow course that doesn't give them much experience of the real world and undermines their investigative spirit, ability to question and sense of potential. The prospect of £9,000 tuition fees and predicted £40,000 graduate debts won't help. If you leave university owing that much, are you going to try to start your own business or get a job based on your degree? You go for the job, of course, or all that money wasted!  You'd be better off starting at the bottom in a company and working your way up. When your friend, who went to college, joins you at your company three years later, who do you think will be better equipped to do the job?