From the archive, 6 March 1964: Decline and fall of students sent down
By Terry Coleman. There are financial and social costs to forcing students to leave university before completing their degrees. Goldsmith, Johnson, and Shelley were all, in their day, part of what is now called the problem of waste. They all left university without a degree. It is in a way an academic distinction to be sent down, like Goldsmith, for attacking one's tutor; or, like Shelley, for uttering an atheistic pamphlet. But the 4,500 students a year who leave university without a degree are certainly not those most likely to succeed. Many of them have suffered what is a severe disappointment at the threshold of their adult lives which will set them back years. They are the failures, and they are one in seven of all university students. More...