Asylum seekers and university education, or the first un-PC post of the day

If private educational institutions choose to give fee exemptions to asylum seekers’ children, that’s their prerogative. It would, in my opinion, be wrong to compel the Executive to waive all university fees because they’re asylum seekers and bright enough.

It just doesn’t seem right to set a group apart by preferential treatment — by singling them out for special treatment, they are even more distinctly different (the same goes for any type of affirmative action). I don’t have a solution, aside from organising student loans for these students who, if they achieve their potential, should enter the labour market and earn enough to repay the loans.

(I don’t think a lot of Scottish students truly appreciate the opportunity to go to university because it’s free. Too many think it’s their ‘right’.)

• 21 May 2007

• Thinking