By the expansion of university courses young people are being sold a lie

SIR – The Government’s first step in reorganising higher education (report, February 19) should be to ascertain what the market demand is for graduates in each discipline.

The current system seems little more than a way of minimising youth-unemployment statistics. As things are at the moment, too many of our young people are being sold a lie.

Don Edwards Lawford, Essex

SIR – How many graduates does our economy really need and how many can it afford?

Fifty years ago just 5 per cent of school-leavers went on to university. Now the figure has soared to almost 50 per cent, the entirely arbitrary target dreamt up by Tony Blair in his early days in office. This target seems to have become an article of political faith, yet I am aware of no economic evidence that the British economy needs such a high proportion.

In Germany, for example, Europe’s most successful economy, it is only 27 per cent. Instead Germans prioritise better apprenticeships and focused work-training schemes for young people. That’s what British business and industry are calling for, not for yet more graduates – many of whom have surprisingly poor basic numeracy, literacy and critical reasoning skills.

Our obsession with accessibility rather than quality has also led to such a bloated higher education sector that we have the absurd situation of universities competing for students.

Nigel Henson Farningham, Kent

SIR – You say (Leading article, February 19) that it might be a better career choice to read for an arts degree at Oxford than sciences at a former polytechnic.

Would this be true of Leicester De Montfort, Huddersfield, Lincoln and Coventry – all of which obtained the gold standard in the recent Teaching Excellence Framework Results?

Or would students be better applying to such Russell Group piles as Southampton, Liverpool and the LSE – all of which obtained the lowest, bronze, award?

Professor Chris Barton Stoke-on-trent, Staffordshire

SIR – It might, you say, be better to read an arts subject at Oxford than sciences at a former polytechnic. I doubt if I am wrong in assuming that the answer lies in snobbery towards former polytechnics (or “1992 universities”, as we prefer to be known, thank you).

It was precisely the assumption that some institutions are cheap and therefore second rank that led so many universities to set their fees at the top of the scale, thus creating the mess to which you refer in your leading article.

As it happens, I reckon that the history course at the university where I work will stand favourable comparison with courses at bigger and more prestigious universities.

Dr Sean Lang Senior Lecturer in History Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge