Gaby Hinsliff’s article (More equal than the others – that’s how the middle class stays ahead, 14 July) is so riddled with class prejudice that it comes to grossly distorted conclusions. She sets up a false polarity between “the middle class” (the top 20%) and “the poor” and between Oxbridge and “less prestigious” universities. In between are ordinary working-class families and the bulk of the university sector. Working-class parents also delay having children, have smaller families, do not smoke or drink, read to their children, feed them well and encourage their progress in school. Middle-class parents may be selfish, neglectful, abusive, divorced or alcoholic. Many children of working-class parents attend excellent universities (like Durham, Manchester or Warwick). There is excellent teaching in universities like Middlesex or De Montfort. Students graduating from “newer” universities with vocational degrees in social work, nursing, accountancy or criminology may be more employable than those with degrees in, say, fine art from elite places. Studying at university should not primarily be about social mobility but about developing one’s talents and building the foundations for a career of benefit to oneself, one’s family and wider society.
Susanne MacGregor
London
• Jonathan Wolff suggests creative thinking from HM Treasury to resolve the impending crisis of student debt (There’s a moral whiff in penalising this generation, 11 July).
Although most will be working hard to help fund their studies, perhaps there are one or two economics students with a bit of spare time and imagination who can design a better model for the long-term financing of higher education. They may not even need the promise of a knighthood – just a sporting chance of a system that does not penalise them through future marginal tax rates. That would be a breath of fresh air.
Professor Stephen Caddick
Worthing, West Sussex
• British universities have been undergoing a transformation from being institutions bent on promoting scholarship and preserving civilised values into places bent on facilitating the cost-effective throughput of learning-receptor units who attend principally to purchase certified eduproduct: if nothing else, the unthinking adoption of soul-numbing management speak attests to that. To read Paula Cocozza’s fine, if depressing, article (Students can’t afford to have fun, G2, 12 July), is to prompt the thought that this may be government policy. If you stop students thinking independently and creatively and saddle them with debt, you could neutralise what the last election demonstrated could be a potentially troublesome portion of the electorate. This might be a conspiracy theory too far, but...
Professor Emeritus Michael Rosenthal
Banbury, Oxfordshire
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