Letter: No such thing as a free education

YOUR paper is obviously staffed by people from middle-class homes who enjoyed a traditional free university education ('Who feeds the wolf?', 23 May).

Out here, a growing number of students come from other backgrounds. Increasingly, they are gaining their qualifications later in life and by a variety of full-time and part-time routes. Many of them are already paying a considerable proportion of the costs.

Those graduates who genuinely enjoy 'greatly enhanced earnings' will pay for their education several times over through a progressive taxation system. Those who work in lower paid occupations are thereby making their contribution to society. The question is not whether qualifications should be taxed, but whether our tax system is sufficiently progressive.

Tim South

Leeds