Pros and cons

I AGREE with Graham Tait (Platform, 10 August), that university is by no means the only way to a professional career, and along with other rites of passage such as “gap years” is due a rethink.

Some of the most impressive people I taught across a 40-year career were those who turned up in the evening at Napier College in the 1970s to study for an HNC in physics. Had I been personnel officer in a scientific firm, I would have chosen these men ahead of some kid who had spent four years faffing about in university getting a degree.

Universities should be geared to an intellectual elite. But competence, drive and experience are more important in the grinding world of work.

Dr John Cameron

Howard Place

St Andrews