I READ with interest your report ‘Students turning their back on Uni’ (Oxford Mail, January 31) and should not violently disagree with any of the proposed causes of this turn of events furnished by your expert interviewees, though the precise influence of each of these factors is a moot point and must inevitably remain ultimately unquantifiable.

It could, however, be added that, even in more affluent days, it was already becoming apparent that some degrees in some disciplines at some universities were not worth the paper on which the diploma was printed.

Furthermore, as Nicola Blackwood MP implies, many youngsters, and their parents, simply do not grasp that “no students have to pay upfront fees and no student starts to repay those fees until they start earning £21,000”.

A rather straightforward observation, which arguably indicates they should not be applying in the first place.

Anyway, the point is that the tide has turned – and not a moment too soon – though unfortunately not in happier circumstances.

Much of your We Say column was compelling, though it is hard to accept that “achieving a place at university is still an extraordinary achievement”, the whole problem being, as any fool should have foreseen, the fact that of late it has become far too commonplace.

Finally, I am not really qualified to speculate as to why this trend in Oxfordshire should be twice the national average, but could it just be that this county’s youth tends to be more genuinely intelligent than elsewhere?

DAVID DIMENT, Riverside Court, Oxford