Whatever their various rivalries, real or perceived, there is one area in which Oxford and Cambridge universities seem to be in accord. This is over the matter of tuition fees: both are, predictably, reported to be going for the maximum £9,000.

To do otherwise, it is claimed by both, would be to send out a message that they were not committed to academic excellence. (For some reason newspapers reporting this yesterday felt obliged to put the last word in inverted commas. I can’t think why.) We are told that in each case students from poorer households would receive an annual discount of up to £3,000.

The snag is that neither university has anything like enough of these, given the imbalance between the number of public and privately educated pupils eligible to be candidates.

Now it seems that the Deputy Prime Minister is to force their hand in the matter, telling Oxbridge it must end “social segregation”.

Brace yourself for the usual howls of protest from public school spokespeople.

After the debacle over tuition fees, this is an area where Nick Clegg need not fear unpopularity. The move will be welcomed by the vast bulk of the British population who cannot afford to pay annual school fees that amount, pupil for pupil, to considerably more than most of us earn in a year.