Amid the real public concern about the loss of income to our universities being caused by the colossal drop in the number of paying students from China and elsewhere, the question of what and who our universities should really be for has been raised.

Now, as a peelie-wallie boy growing up on the south side of Edinburgh in the 1930s, the only black people ever seen were university students from Africa. Then, growing older, we sensed how proud the city was that Scotland was able to help their poverty-stricken countries.

When in my twenties I unexpectedly found myself studying at Edinburgh University, I learned that many fellow students from the old Empire had been recruited and were supported by the British Council, while the university charged reduced fees and actually employed an Overseas Chaplain. Thereby, our country had educated the future leaders of independent Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. And this benevolent policy was maintained while Britain had unprecedented wartime debt to repay and even when the US Government responded to the advent of a Labour Government post-war by raising the trade terms for wheat to the extent that bread rationing had to be imposed.

The recent norm of abandoning Victorian and Socialist traditions to cash in on rich students from overseas in order to boost Scottish universities has made ours a far from funny new world. 

Jack Kellet (Rev), Innerleithen