Jobs and local study

The arguments of Rick Audas and Peter Dalton that students who can afford to study away from home enjoy the best job prospects ("Students who leave home 'get best jobs'", THES, April 2) need to take account of part-time employment.

Students often cite retaining jobs from sixth form as a reason for studying locally.

Sixth-form employment may explain why parents leave their offspring to finance themselves. Some first-year students have no parental help towards fees and accommodation (total Pounds 1,700), and must therefore take up student loans, overdrafts and part-time jobs from the start.

Paying off debts, often a graduate priority, is most easily achieved by continuing in the same employment. Part-time jobs can link sixth form, higher education and graduate employment. They tie students to specific localities by offering modest security.

Moreover, student loans and cheap overdrafts mean that everyone can now study away from home. What can be afforded is not an absolute, but a relative standard, a complex matter of choice and judgement. While poverty is the background of many local students, others have families with the means of financing study further afield but not the will. There is a big financial overlap between those willing to pay and those who are unwilling.

If tipping career opportunity in favour of "the wealthier" means towards those who invest in education, I do not object. Tipping it "in favour of the more able" appears positively desirable.

Michael Hicks. Head of history. King Alfred's College, Winchester.