Why is it that, when university education is being discussed, it is always in the context of exams?

Few people, I guess, would want standards to decline in any area of life but there are more issues to consider regarding university education than educational standards - and they are more important, too.

For example, going to university means, for many youngsters, moving away from home to the environment of either the campus or digs, which could well have salutary consequences.

It also means meeting and mixing with people from all kinds of different social and ethnic backgrounds.

Then there are the staff with outstanding minds who lead them with varying degrees of skill into the thoughts of historical figures who, previously, had been mere names to them. In this way, youngsters discover new worlds.

All this, of course, cannot be measured or socially assessed but it is the reason we should all be delighted that more and more "first generation" youngsters - not enough, of course - are now being given the chance.

So let's place "standards" in its correct context.

There is more to university education than its cash value.

-RG Jenkins, Hove