The government wants to overhaul the university admissions system, changing it from a complicated muddle of deadlines and form-filling to a new complicated muddle of deadlines and form-filling.
It's always going to be that complicated because it involves assessing the skills of around 1 million students and then trying to shoehorn them into the right courses.
What's proposed is that the practice of students applying through Ucas on the basis of predicted grades is dropped because 36% of predictions are too generous and 15% too low. The students who are most likely to be underestimated are those from poorer schools.
The Times clearly thinks that one of the government's proposed solutions - to put some places aside for people to apply after their results so they get a stab at the "better" courses - is social engineering. The higher education minister, Bill Rammell, says it's just plain fair.
But the second idea, to get every student to "register" for courses while they are studying and get feedback and "expressions of interest" before applying properly post-qualifications just seems like a doubling of the workload for students and admissions officers.
What will certainly be welcome is the scrapping of clearing, which ranks a whole raft of courses as second class, and the decision to introduce, for every student, some feedback on why they get rejected. At the moment, it's a plain yes or no answer.
The government is consulting on its plans until December, and has published a consultation document. If that's too long-winded, we've condensed it here. What do you think?
