News & Views item - July 2006

 

 

One Scots' Opinion on "Why Taxpayers Must Fund Higher Education". (July 31, 2006)

 

    The following letter was received by The Herald (Glasgow)

Why taxpayers must fund higher education

 

Your Letters

July 31 2006

 

So Ian Binnie of Des Moines [Iowa, USA] (Letters, July 28) was amused to read that students here incur large and inhibitive debts in trying to pursue their desired careers. He doesn't see why the working class should pay for people to go to university. I'll endeavour to enlighten him.

 

The main reason that all taxpayers should fund higher education is that this would allow people from all socio-economic backgrounds to achieve the maximum level of qualification of which their brains are capable.

 

Mr Binnie's preferred policy will ensure that the present, unfair relationship between someone's parents' income and their chance of a satisfying career is perpetuated.

 

Mr Binnie was fortunate that his desired profession (engineering) offered apprenticeships; most do not. Our society needs doctors, social workers, teachers, librarians,

architects, (some) lawyers, civil servants, dentists and many more professionals who require years of training.

 

It is quite an indictment of American society that, as Mr Binnie states, its youth attend university mainly to make more filthy lucre. Here, people are perhaps just a tad more civically-minded.

 

Taking his logic to its conclusion, I should be under no obligation to pay for the police or prisons, because I have never been a victim of crime; the National Health Service, because I am never ill; schools, because I have no children; the military, because I abhor civilian casualties.

 

There cannot exist a society whose citizens pay only the taxes they want to pay, because its exchequer would wither and expire in a very short order of time.

 

Duncan McLean, 22 Ronald Place, Stirling.