Letter: University cuts are damaging for society

Published on Monday 27 June 2011 17:00

With the government's much publicised aspirations to create a "big society" I am rapidly losing the will to live in this big, brave, new world.

By what methods will it be achieved? By axeing university courses which allow young people to gain an understanding of the social, cultural and political values of the society they live in?

Will young people not be forced into an even narrower world due to being prevented from attending university?

The courses under threat at Strathclyde University have long examined the very issues which currently dominate our media and lives: participation in the arts and music, youth offending, global citizenship, influence and reach of media and public relations, sectarianism, climate change, use of natural resources.

Without music specialists, who will teach our children to learn and appreciate the rich benefits music can bring to all?

Without sociologists and community work practitioners, who will provide analysis of inequality in society? Who will work with and support those experiencing that inequality?

Without geographers, who will inform housing, health and environmental policy and practice and help us understand the relationship between people and the space we live in?

Graduates of these courses do "give something back" (Letters, 24 June) and are often badly paid and unappreciated.

The west of Scotland has one of the largest "stay at home" student populations in Europe and this is not because our children fear going out into the big society. It is purely economic. Most families cannot afford for their children to live away from home for three or four years.

What choices do they have? Unemployment? Study which values only learning and research funded by large corporations?

Scotland's innovative and respected Curriculum for Excellence for 3-to-18-year-olds proudly commits to enabling every child in Scotland to "become a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor".

And what then?

Maggie Farrell

Myrtle Park

Glasgow

What is a university (your report, 27 June)? As I see it there have been three distinct periods of development. Firstly, it was a platform for the elite to think. Then it transitioned and became a metaphor for "social and cultural melting pot".

The future of the university is to be a mixture of "teaching business" and "ideas factory". It seems to me that each of these stages have been borne out of necessity in one way or another.

The first was an aristocratic badge of honour, the second a societies' collective rebuke to war, the third (and current) a reaction to macro-economic collapse.

In each case the meaning of university has profoundly changed. I get the feeling that those protesting against the most recent change in universities are swimming against the tide of history.

David McMillan

Westbank Quadrant

Glasgow