I ENJOYED your report (May 2) of Education Minister Brian Wilson's latest broadside at the older universities: all the right stuff was there - aspirations of working-class students, elitism, need for a more plural society, etc, etc.
He was on safe ground until he referred to the low representation of Afro-Caribbean men in the universities. Afro-Caribbeans as a group in the last Census of Scotland were statistically insignificant, so it is hardly surprising that most students in that category are from the Commonwealth countries.
If Mr Wilson seriously wants to increase the numbers of Afro-Caribbean students they will have to be attracted from England. Unfortunately, due to the anomalous rules for tuition fees introduced by Mr Wilson, students coming from England will have to pay #1000 more in fees for a four-year degree course than Scottish students on the same course.
It can therefore be confidently predicted that Afro-Caribbean representation will continue to be low - thanks to Government policy.
However, it will be noted that the Minister's criticisms of the universities got wide press coverage despite being quite empty - the mark of effective propaganda.
H Ferguson,
54 Terregles Avenue, Glasgow.
May 3.
BRIAN Wilson is mistaken in believing that former polytechnics have ''stolen a march'' on Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Aberdeen universities in recruiting students from lower socio-economic groups (Universities told to leave their elitist pasts behind, May 2).
The reason why Paisley University's student body is 95% Scottish, while those of Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Stirling are barely 50% Scottish, is to be found in the quoted remark of a St Andrews official that applicants are welcomed ''based solely on academic merit''.
Since, as your education correspondent reported (Edinburgh rated top Scottish university, May 1), in evaluating universities one A-level was considered equal to 1.6 Highers, English students with A-levels are accorded higher ''academic merit'' and have driven Scottish students out of our top universities.
This happens the more easily because a large majority of staff in our universities are English and therefore naturally have more affinity with A-levels.
A-levels are put into the same academic-measuring-scales as Highers though they are a completely different animal. A-level pupils concentrate on two or three subjects for two or even three years, while the Scottish pupil covers five or six subjects over one or rarely two years.
When narrow A-levels (condemned by English headmasters) compete with broad Highers for entry into departments, the A-levels clearly win out, though the A-level applicants are less well educated by traditional Scottish standards of breadth.
As a result Scottish students have long suffered a grave injustice as our universities have increasingly been amalgamated into the English system, with the ludicrous result you reported yesterday: Edinburgh, the university of the Scottish Enlightenment, which Thomas Jefferson called ''the greatest university in the world for science'', placed eighth in a league table after seven English institutions!
I do not often agree with Tory spokespersons but Elizabeth Smith is absolutely right when she says that the scrapping of maintenance grants will have a greater impact on lower-income families than tuition fees. It is odd that New Labour politicians and the media have consistently covered this up.
Our Parliament must, as a matter of priority, set up a commission to investigate our higher education in depth, and hopefully begin the long process of change back to the celebrated methods and standards that caused Thomas Jefferson to think so highly of Edinburgh University that he modelled his University of Virginia on it.
Andrew Lockhart Walker,
7 Lovers' Loan, Dollar.
May 2.
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