Letters to the Editor
Subsidising students
Sir: I must protest most strongly about Skinflint's disgraceful attack upon students in his column (January 5).
One of my daughters is a university lecturer and another one is a student reading law and consequently for some years I have had first hand information about the affairs of students.
I often hear remarks expressing the same sentiments as Skinflint's in bars and clubs from equally misinformed citizens who were themselves not suitable for further academic training. Under such circumstances these remarks are merely starting points for discussion and have minimal effect on public opinion. However these same remarks expressed in the City column of The Spectator can be extremely damaging.
In some quarters and for some years there has been a prejudice against the employment of undergraduates and as a result the country is suffering. I am convinced that our sorry record as a nation since the war in the economic field is due partly to this prejudice. The students themselves have been victims of party politics — each party in turn has promised mere and more places. It is this factor which has caused overcrowding and a certain lowering of the standards to which Skinflint refers. It has also increased the 'lunatic fringe' from one per cent to possibly 3 per cent. Lunatic fringes occur in every body of people be they policemen, serving officers or even journalists. No fair minded person would dream of attributing the faults of this fringe to the body as a whole. I would assure both Skinflint and your readers that at least 95 per cent of students are hard working responsible citizens away from home in a strained, rarefied atmosphere Which can be just as toughening to the character as the poverty which Skinflint miraculously changes into a virtue. An extra strain on students is the fact that their parents are often making a contribution on top of the "lashing out of huge sums of tax he cannot afford" (Skinflint). The failure in examinations in such circumstances is a heavy moral burden.
I hope you can find space in your columns for these words in support of the inarticulate 95 per cent of students at our universities.
Sydney Norgate Enderleigh, Brant Avenue, Illingworth, Halifax Sir: Although a student myself I agree almost entirely with Skinflint's sentiment (January 5) that students are in no way entitled to a living at the taxpayer's expense. Whether they are well-behaved or otherwise is, however, in my opinion, immaterial — there can be no case for the massive state subsidies which exist allegedly to preserve the university industry but in reality only preserve it in the shocking state it is now in.
Where he and I would part company is, I fear, in his apparent attitude that anyone who chooses to spend a period of study either deserves to undergo simultaneous enforced poverty or else should be made to take it as a kind of medicine for the soul — this attitude is scarcely less authoritarian than that which makes membership of the National Union of Students virtually compulsory. The time has come to stop charity for students. I am frequently embarrassed and infuriated by my colleagues who think the state and/or their parents owe them an expensive education and a living. Everyone at university is amply able to pay the full economic cost of his education and to support himself given a suitable loans system. Until this simple fact is grasped the taxpayer will continue to be soaked and the wastage of manpower and resources will steadily worsen.
What a man pays for himself no one (not even Skinflint) can begrudge him. Andrew Lennard 15 Albany Park, St Andrews, Fife
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