Letter: Students need to be away from home

From Mr Tom Smithies

Sir: Peter Watson raises the prospect of more university students being encouraged to live at home during the course of their degrees (Letters, 5 April). Yet surely one goes to university as much for a social education as its academic equivalent.

Halls of residence, shared houses and so on act as the best form of halfway house between living with one's parents, and being out in the real world, with all the latter's harsh realities. To encourage a dominant culture of studying from home is to lose all the benefits of shared learning and development that moving to university can offer. How else will students learn to cook, socialise, entertain and so on, without the relaxed ambience of student days?

Yours faithfully,

TOM SMITHIES

Leeds

5 April