JIM Stewart’s comments on the student cap (Letters, March 19) are a carefully crafted soundbite of negativity, aimed firmly at discrediting the Scottish Government. His view, made through a narrow, dark and murky lens, paints a drab picture of a careless and uncaring government intent on discriminating against poorer students. But is this really true? Let’s clean that lens, open our eyes and look at the bigger picture.

First, rather than crushing ambitions, the Scottish Government has pledged through social funding and policy to bridge the attainment gap. Would an uncaring Government “set ambitious new targets that will ensure that by 2030, students from the 20% most deprived areas make up 20 percent of higher education entrants”? That does not sound like an uncaring government!

And if the Scottish Government is guilty of discrimination, then it’s a positive discrimination to make our society more equal. Why else would they be expanding the Attainment Fund, injecting money into our schools and investing in our teachers?

Let us open our eyes a little more. For universities to be viable, they must pursue a pragmatic funding model. If the wealthy parents of non-Scottish, non-EU students can help to keep fees down and reduce the burden for the investors in Scotland’s future (Scottish taxpayers), I see that as a smart move.

View it as another successful inward investment, one that helps Scotland educate its next generation of doctors, nurses, engineers, economists, solicitors, chemists, biologists, business leaders and, dare I say it, even politicians.

And if that list includes young, talented, Scottish-educated EU and non-EU nationals who decide to stay and make a life in Scotland, we’ve ticked another box. Scotland needs them to prevent a decline in our population. We need their skills and the taxes they will pay as productive members of society, helping to fund our public services and, yes, helping to fund the fees for the next generation of students entering higher education.

And if logic prevails, then not every EU student will come from a wealthy background. For those who do, their local contribution to the economy around our universities – cafes, accommodation, food, travel, book purchases, clothes, laundry, entertainment, etc – is another form of inward investment.

For those others, the ones who cannot afford the fees, then does our willingness to bridge the attainment gap only apply to Scots? Can we not, as citizens of the EU, extend to them the same moral and socially democratic values we aspire to? Can we not be the better nation?

Others in the EU can make that claim: ten of the EU countries, as well as Norway, do not charge undergraduate students tuition fees. If their “home” students don’t pay any fees, UK students are entitled to study for free. (Or were! If Scotland is dragged out of the EU that’s all about to change.)

I won’t deny that there are caps, but they will have nothing to do with a malicious intent to discriminate or to destroy aspirations, and everything to do with the practicalities of balancing the available funding.

I look forward to a time when there are no limits in access to education, but that won’t happen in a Scotland bound to the millstone of the Union and Westminster.

Only an independent Scotland will have the freedom to make the changes we all want to see: a fairer, happierand prosperous society, one that has the will to share the benefits of Scotland’s social and economic wealth throughout its population.

Alistair Potter
Portobello

IT is obvious than Jim Stewart understands very little about the arrangements in our universities. If foreign students come and take advantage of the free tuition in Scottish universities it is because of reciprocal arrangement in place which allow Scottish students to go to their countries and enjoy similar benefits there.

Many students indeed do come from countries which do not have reciprocal deals. They pay very handsomely to study at terrific Scottish universities. There is of course no limitless fund available to the devolved Scottish Government to fund free tuition, so the money these overseas students pay very usefully funds free tuition for many more of our young people.

Scotland now has a record number of its young people in university.

David McEwan Hill
Sandbank, Argyll

JIM Stewart complains about the cap of the number of students from working-class and lower-middle class backgrounds. Does he think that asking students from these backgrounds to pay tuition fees would be preferable? Somehow I doubt it, but it is probably the only way the cap can be removed. Unfortunately, the numbers attending would be manageable, but only because many families could not afford the fees.

Douglas Turner
Edinburgh