Fallacies, fees and PhDs

Do Oxbridge academics lose their rationality when writing on the emotive subject of Oxbridge entry? Vernon Bogdanor argues in The Mirror of June 20 that if "they are to continue to do good work (in research), then Oxford and Cambridge must choose the best students". A splendid non sequitur, unless he claims that all Oxbridge research students should be home grown by the two universities, which is surely not so. His argument lends strong support to the proposal that Oxbridge should become wholly postgraduate, raised by me some years ago in The THES and repeated by R. Harris (Letters, THES, June 9).

Lewis Elton

Professor of higher education

University College London

Soapbox, page 18