YOUR recent report that thousands of Scots who are part-time students in higher education may no longer have to pay tuition fees is welcome news. However, if we consider the implications of all of New Labour's changes to student funding, a disturbing picture emerges.
Mrs Thatcher started to erode the value of maintenance grants to students from poor families and now Brian Wilson has finished off her work by scrapping grants completely. A school-leaver from a poor family may now prefer part-time higher education as a means of avoiding debt. Meanwhile, school-leavers from more affluent families are more likely to fulfil their potential in full-time higher education.
New Labour's abandonment of free education means that we could well see class-stratified access to education. Indeed, students from poor families would be economically irrational if they did not take into account New Labour's funding regime.
I would like to know what Brian Wilson is doing about monitoring the effects on the poor of these changes. Even Mrs Thatcher was honest enough to do that!
Peter Thanisch,
58 Spottiswoode Street,
Edinburgh.
May 6.
I WAS interested in the new ''Vet School'' perspective on the Government's proposals for funding higher education. No doubt many more indefensible consequences will emerge, some great, some small.
My concern is relatively small. It relates to the plight of children from island or other remote communities, about which I wrote to my MP, Brian Wilson, in February. To date I have not received a response to this particularly problem (only a rather lengthy copy of a press release).
If I lived in Ayrshire my daughter would have a good choice of universities. She could travel daily, and eat at the family table each evening. However, as an islander she must live away from home and pay accommodation costs averaging #50 a week before she pays for food, fares, or books. The student grant used to pay for this.
I will somehow find the means for her to have the benefit of a university education, and some would say that those who benefit should pay. But what about other remote families with average earnings which are eaten up by the costs of rural living and who dread the thought of debt?
And what about those other beneficiaries of higher education, the employers of graduates?
Stefan Holmer,
Shore Cottage,
Whiting Bay,
Isle of Arran.
May 7.
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