In his column “Nearly half our universities are going to the wall. Two thirds would be better”, Rod Liddle expresses the thoughts of many about higher education. Faced with changes to visa rules, university leaders bleat about the loss of income due to reductions in the number of foreign students. Do they properly analyse the benefit those students bring to the country?
A university lecturer friend of mine asked a group of Indian students why they all studied business. Their answer: because the agent in India told us to. Their next goal is to find a way to ensure permanent residence. It is not racist to question the impact this has on public services and housing — and all, it seems, to protect the universities.
Harinder S Pattar, Hitchin
1950s thinking
As usual, Liddle does not allow facts or reality to influence his rant. He advocates the closure of universities, but I wonder if he has ever heard the old adage, “Education is expensive, but much cheaper than the alternative.”
I act as an accreditor for university engineering programmes. In that role I visit many institutions to look at the quality of education offered. I simply don’t recognise his depiction of poor quality or indoctrination. As a committed Brexiteer, he has a history of trying to drag the UK back to the 1950s. We should pay no heed to this latest attempt.
Professor Chris Guy, Reading
High-flyers only
Liddle is absolutely right: we do not need second-rate universities churning out debt-laden graduates in non-subjects. They should be turned into vocational colleges to give local young people the skills to help themselves and the country; meanwhile, academic high-flyers, irrespective of background and income, should be fully funded at the top institutions and become the elite in the arts and sciences that every nation needs to prosper. A very small percentage of places could be reserved for the ablest foreign students, at much higher fees.
John Hicks, Manchester
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Driving down standards
I have a small contribution to this debate in my capacity as a home delivery driver for a large supermarket. I deliver to many Chinese students. Few of them can speak a word of English. I cannot begin to understand how they can complete a degree course taught in English. But they’re here, spending their family’s money and collecting their upper seconds.
I’m grateful to them for funding my job, and my country’s economy; but dismayed at the resulting dismantling of our educational standards.
Richard Adams, Exeter
