SIR – As an increasing number of universities reveal that they will demand the full £9,000 a year from new students and that our university in Worcester will demand more than £8,000 for some courses, we are told that more and more young people are retreating at the thought of being saddled with so much debt so early in their lives.

However, it needn’t be this way and at the risk of sounding unpopular among my peers, I actually think tuition fees of £8,000 or £9,000 a year are manageable.

As a current student I pay almost £4,000 a year for my education, as well as borrowing nearly another £4,000 a year to live away from home.

By the time I finish my degree next year, I will be in possession of about £20,000 of debt.

Yet it is not the sum of money which particularly upsets me.

What is more irritating – and what the Government ought to be investigating and tackling – is the scandalous amount of time that universities encourage students like myself to waste.

In a normal ‘working’ week, I am expected to attend a mere 12 hours of study.

The university gets around More than 75 per cent of the material used to make today’s paper came from yesterday’s.

Recycled paper made up 87.2 per cent of the raw material for UK papers in 2008.

MICHAEL SMITH
Worcester