Just how pathetic and contemptible are our universities? They are among the institutions most reluctant to get back to normal, even though their paying customers were among those least at risk from Covid and they’ve all had it by now, at least twice, anyway.

Young people deserve better. In their first two years of uni, my son and his friends must have had a grand total of three months of uninterrupted education, as much as five hours of it in person, and the rest via a blank screen because everyone in the virtual class turned their cameras off for “privacy reasons” (still in bed). Yet there is no mention of a refund. On the contrary…

Dear Learner,

Please find enclosed a bill of £45,000 for tuition plus accommodation. I know some of you were unable to use your accommodation because we closed the library, the sports facilities and sent you home, but these things still have to be paid for!

Although the Government has lifted all Plan B restrictions, please do NOT come into college yet, to ensure that we keep our community safe. While our lecturers obviously haven’t been in since February 2020, they will be on campus next week. For the strike.

Some students have expressed concerns about missing out on graduation. Don’t worry! We’ll email you a splendid PDF of your degree certificate, which you may print.

The Leavers’ Ball will go ahead – on Zoom. Tickets are a very reasonable £230 each, with a small levy for technical support, cheques payable to the vice chancellor. He is still socially distancing in the Cayman Islands (can’t be too careful!), but he wishes to convey all good wishes for a successful future and very much hopes you will remember St Rip-Off’s in any future bequests…

Mind you, given what lecturers are prepared to teach students these days, maybe keeping the places permanently closed wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Last week, it was the University of Northampton slapping a “trigger warning” on George Orwell’s enduring satire Nineteen Eighty-Four. Students are warned the classic work “addresses challenging issues related to violence, gender, sexuality, class, race, abuses, sexual abuse, political ideas and offensive language”. Blimey, let’s hope nobody tells the sensitive flowers about that really not very nice man Mr Stalin who inspired it.

This week, it’s the highly respected English department at Royal Holloway, University of London, which has issued a “content note” for Oliver Twist, lest its themes of “child abuse”, “domestic violence” and “racial prejudice” cause “anxiety” or “distress”. You would hope that students on the Victorian Literature, Art and Culture MA course would understand that Charles Dickens’s portrait of, say, Mr Bumble striking orphan Oliver when he asks for more food was supposed to convey the wretched conditions of the 19th century workhouse in order to drive social reform.

How odd that this generation of students, so willing to take offence at the smallest thing, is not out on the streets protesting about their rotten treatment at the hands of some greedy, arrogant universities who exploit the pandemic for their own benefit.

It looks like we may soon achieve the ideal situation for those universities where all books are considered too alarming to open. Do students even need to read novels at all? Back in the pea-souper of time, when I was taking the Oxbridge entrance exam, I turned over one paper to discover all the questions were on authors I’d never read. Panic stations! I managed to concoct an essay based entirely on my word-perfect knowledge of the film Oliver! (we sang along to the soundtrack on car journeys to Cornwall and back). Emerging from the attic classroom a couple of hours later, I almost collapsed into the arms of my English teacher, Miss Richardson, who was waiting outside.

“Miss, it was awful. I wrote an essay on Oliver Twist, but I’ve never read it.”

“Oh, don’t worry, dear. The dons certainly won’t have seen the musical.”

She was right. I got my best mark for that paper. I finally got round to reading Oliver Twist last year. Pretty good, but not a patch on Lionel Bart’s musical, which truly is a work of genius.

“If you don’t mind ’avin to fake your learnin’

It’s a fine life!

Though a comp girl applying for Cambridge struggles to get in

It’s a fine life!”

You can read Allison Pearson’s column every Tuesday and listen to Allison with fellow columnist Liam Halligan on The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, featuring news and views from beyond the bubble, on the audio player at the top of this article, or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast app