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Letters

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Letters

Letters: February 3

Letters

Letters

Letters

Letters: It's not just about faith

Letters

Letters: The myth-making of Mr Miliband

Letters

Kingsley Amis was right: more means worse (Higher profile, February 24). Don't confuse the question whether educating more people is a good idea with the question whether the best of them get as well taught as before. The answer to the first is yes and to the second, no. Warwick is a perfectly decent university, but nobody there gets taught in the meticulous way that Amis was taught by JB Leishman; even Susan Bassnett, a loyal pro-vice- chancellor, says repeatedly that under-funding and the pressures of the RAE mean Warwick students never learn how to write because they just don't get enough practice.
Alan Ryan, New College, Oxford

Lecturers' pay - a burning issue?

When I read Sally Hunt demanding substantial pay increases for academics (Opinion, February 24) I had to suppress a smile. My dad, who died last year, was, until retirement, head of politics at Reading University. He used to teach for a couple of hours a day, except Fridays which he always had off. He travelled the world, usually under the guise of attending some international conference. He was relatively well paid for reading, writing and mixing with interesting people and was regarded by some colleagues as a workaholic. He freely admitted he had "the best job in the world".

When firefighters went on strike, it was pointed out that if they were so underpaid, how come there were dozens of applicants for every vacancy? The same is true of lecturers.
Simon R Gladdish, Swansea

· I am a first-year student at the University of Nottingham and scheduled to miss at least 12 lectures in the two days of lecturers' strikes. If this carries on, I can only see my studies getting further behind. With exams approaching, these strikes will surelya affect students in the long run.

With the amount universities get from government funding, sponsorships and increasing student fees, I find it hard to believe they cannot pay lecturers what they deserve. It seems "elite" universities wish to isolate themselves from any form of regulation so they can simply charge excessively and underpay. This is not the way I understood the education system was meant to function.
Matthew Cullum, Nottingham

· What a silly article on Oxford history dons (Career doctor, February 24)! The cheap humour rests on clichés and stereotypes that were already outdated 30 years ago. Whilst I anticipate that your response will be that this was not intended to be taken seriously, this cannot be used to justify printing such rubbish.

My experience was that our tutors worked very hard to balance the demands of research and teaching (which they did very professionally, and with a great deal of preparation), on salaries much lower than those they would receive at a US institution.
Daniel Farchy, Bologna

Adults disqualified

One of the issues that does not seem to have been discussed regarding the proposals for a unified diploma (Letters, February 24) is adult learners. If schoolchildren effectively leave education with a single qualification, what options would be open to adult learners who might currently go back and study for a couple of GCSEs or a single AS- or A-level, out of interest or to boost their qualifications? Would they only be able to gain an incomplete diploma rather than useful stand-alone qualifications?
Thomas Larque, Walderslade

The properties of the yellow cake

I realise we research mathematicians are doing a poor job in popularising mathematics. However, I have kept the hope that educated people have some idea what it is about. What is the Yellow Cake? (Improbable research, February 10) has made me just sad.

The yellow cake is a kind of coffee cake, something small, sweet and yellow that goes nicely with your afternoon coffee. It is yellow because of yolks, I believe. I would avoid cakes with artificial colouring.

The title of our research paper is The Yellow Cake and not On the Yellow Cake. The latter suggests we are going to talk about an object called the yellow cake, so it would be natural to expect its definition. However, it is the article itself that is called The Yellow Cake, the same way I am called "Roslanowski".

Marc Abrahams, apparently, is not interested in what it stands for, otherwise he would have asked us. Then why is this story published? Is one of the reasons the will to underscore the gap between the research frontier and the public? Maybe we should rather work on building bridges.

It is a research paper, not a story for children. One does not try to read the score of La Traviata without first learning how. If you want to read maths, first learn its language.

The main motivation for doing mathematical research is beauty. While following the precise rules of constructing mathematical proofs, we are somewhat free in choosing the way we organise and present them. We may play with terminology to underline the charm of the argument. To understand this beauty, one has to study for a long time - it does take a lot of time to learn how to read a music score, doesn't it?
Andrzej Roslanowski, University of Nebraska at Omaha