Paying the price

Sir: Lionel Shriver’s piece about university standards rang true to me (‘University is supposed to be hard’, 15 October). When I, then working for a distinctly moth-eaten British university, visited a very famous private college in Massachusetts in 1985, I expressed my envy of his luxurious surroundings to a professor of English. His reply was: ‘Don’t envy us. You have something we don’t have. It’s called standards.’ He went on to say that he had just been warned about his behaviour as he had given a ‘very generous’ B minus for an essay by an ‘idle, insolent, profoundly ignorant pig of a student’, who complained about the low grade to his father – a complaint that was then passed on to the university president and, in turn, to the head of department. British universities were not then dependent on fees paid by students or their parents. I have no doubt that the fact that they now are is responsible for the enormous increase in the number of first-class degrees and the change to upper second as the most common degree class. A classic case of ‘he who pays the piper…’.

Robert Walls

Camberley, Surrey

In praise of Gen Z

Sir: While Lionel Shriver’s criticism of NYU for dismissing Dr Maitland Jones for teaching a too-demanding course in organic chemistry is probably just, I would like to rebut Ms Shriver’s implied criticism of the current generation of ‘Gen Z’ students. As an emeritus professor, I taught quantum mechanics and mathematical methods through the lockdowns and was amazed at the resilience and work ethic of the students. Undergraduate years are about so much more than academic study, and in being banished to their homes and kept apart by ‘social distancing’ they lost everything beyond study. But study they did, and we should be proud of them.

James Binney, FRS Emeritus Professor of Physics, Oxford University

High time

Sir: To label America’s ongoing efforts to legalise cannabis an ‘abject failure’ is both uncharitable and unimaginative (‘Joint failure’, 15 October). Attempts to undo 50 years of the most rigorously enforced prohibition ever attempted in the modern world will of course take time. The legal market is competing against the purest free market in the world which, naturally, is proving to be rather resilient. No policy has ever been implemented perfectly at the first attempt. Nevertheless, a number of desirable outcomes have been achieved in regulated markets: lower levels of youth usage, decreased levels of the riskiest drug use, diversification of available product, taking money and power out of the hands of criminal gangs and a focus on reducing the harms associated with cannabis use.

Clearly there is still work to be done. Lowering the taxes levied on cannabis is a start, but we cannot allow ourselves to fall into the trap of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let us not forget that the alternative to legally regulated markets is prohibition, for which the label ‘abject failure’ would be far too kind. It’s high time the UK went down the same path. Thanks to the trial-and-error approach of countries such as the US, we’ll be in an even better position to do so.

Jay Jackson, head of policy and public affairs, Volteface, Birmingham

Kings and presidents

Sir: Simon Sebag Montefiore (Diary, 15 October) says that only two rulers from history started as monarchs and became elected presidents. What about a third – Seretse Khama? He became kgosi (king) of Bechuanaland in 1925, was later exiled, but returned and was elected first president of the newly independent Botswana in 1966.

Stephen Terry

Newton Abbot, Devon

By the book

Sir: I am sure there must be other examples of pubs where writers met to discuss their works (‘Fellowship of the Lamb’, 8 October) but when visiting the Baltic states in May, I happened to dine at the Restaurant Pegasus in Tallinn. On leaving I was presented with a secondhand book, it being their tradition so to do in honour of the restaurant’s literary past. The book was John Galsworthy’s A Modern Comedy: The White Monkey, but of course printed in Estonian!

Jim Ransome

Colchester, Essex

The doctor isn’t in

Sir: Leyla Sanai’s highly critical review of Olivia Campbell’s book on three pioneering women doctors (Books, 15 October) takes it as read that women in medicine are just as good as men. Unquestionably true. However, neither Sanai nor anyone else has dared to come out in public to say that training as many women as men has led to a severe shortage of doctors, because so many women do not pursue full-time careers. A late, good friend of mine who was herself a medical tutor at an Oxford college once said to me: ‘There are too many women in medicine.’ The problem is exacerbated by the fact that many male doctors find working conditions in the NHS so bad that they also work part-time. There are no easy or simple solutions. Some might include greatly increasing the number of medical students, but training twice as many women as men; slimming down management and using the money to train more doctors; changing selection preferences so academic ability takes second place to the willingness to care. Finally, how about a Royal Commission on the NHS to come up with a new system to replace a broken one?

Professor Robin Jacoby

Bicester, Oxfordshire

On the money

Sir: Charles Moore rightly condemns the dumbing-down of the coin of the realm by using Charles instead of Carolus (Notes, 15 October). Does it not follow that we are now living in the Charlesian era or, perhaps more understandably, the Charleston era?

Bob Holbrey

Ilkley, West Yorkshire