Letter: Fees for students

FROM their comfortable positions, it is charming and natural for Sebastian MacMillan and Ian Johnston (Letters, 25 March) to wish that all the world could enjoy the same privileges at university as they did. Alas, the world, and certainly Britain, is not yet wealthy enough for this to be possible. Given the NHS waiting lists and the deficiencies of state schooling, it is unlikely ever to be so.

For more students, especially those from poor schools and poor families, even to get to university demands fairer sharing of scarce resources. This means that the only way to open the university doors wider is further to reduce costs or to introduce fees. It is then not unjust to expect that those who can afford to make a modest contribution to the cost of their studies do so on behalf of those who cannot. Fees are the instrument of social justice, not its enemy.

In any case, for universities to be wholly dependent on government patronage is to set the clock back to the Middle Ages. Their most cherished attribute is their freedom to oppose conformity and, if it should come to it, the government itself. That prospect makes the current argument about fees look quite small. It would be better for universities to be wholly funded out of fees, leaving it to government to recompense students accordingly. We would then witness a rebirth of higher education in Britain.

Professor Sir GRAHAM HILLS

Inverness