Tax on graduates

Press, 12 July 1988, Page 12

Tax on graduates

Sir,—-I should like to offer 'these thoughts by a departing academic visitor on the proposal to lay a tax on university students at their graduation. This is an altogether evil idea. It penalises excellence, perseverance and achievement, and it informs those with the capacity to complete university degrees that they will not be wanted in society unless they have the instant capacity to make money, at a time when society is less and less willing to pay for the services they can render. It threatens death to hope, industry and imagination. If the State wants to discourage university education, and at the same time to turn students into a source of revenue, it would do better to lay a tax on them when they first enrol at a university, payable four years later by those who have not graduated by that date. A certain number of tax-dodging degrees would then be granted, but at least you would not be punishing the honest, the hardworking and the creative. Either way, however, the amount of tax collected by the State would grow less each year, so it would be better to forget the whole unjust, ungenerous and foolish proposal.—Yours, etc., J. G. A. POCOCK, Canterbury Visiting Fellow, 1988, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A. July 8,1988.