Letter: Tuition fee facts

The Scottish graduate endowment was only abolished in 2008. The figures cited from Universities UK's report are from 2008/9.

While cost is likely to be an important factor in determining demand for university places from students from low income families no-one has ever claimed that it would operate separately from the many longer term factors.

Even more damagingly, your leader makes no reference to the warnings that the report contains about the reliability of the "low income" categories used in the report or to the fact that the data on which its conclusions are based cover only 78 per cent of students.

Your leader completely ignores the report's explicit warning that because of a temporary change of classification the data for 2008/9 cannot be compared with previous years.

There are plenty of hard questions to be asked about how university education should be financed while being made more accessible to students from the lower income groups but your leader's cavalier misuse of its main source of evidence disqualifies it as a serious contribution to finding an answer.

Stephen Maxwell

Findhorn Place

Edinburgh