> It is true that only about 5 percent of the British population attended university in my own student days, and there are those who claim that today, when that

> It is true that only about 5 percent of the British population attended university in my own student days, and there are those who claim that today, when that figure has risen to around 50 percent, such liberality of spirit is no longer affordable. Yet Germany, to name only one example, provides free education to its sizable student population. ... Yes, they have, and from what I've heard it consists substantially of very large seminar classes and an expectation of self-directed, self-motivated study from its students: hardly the paradigm the author has been mourning where faculty might expect that > the undergraduate would simply drop round to their rooms when the spirit moved him for a glass of sherry and a civilized chat about Jane Austen or the function of the pancreas. (Also available in Germany, just to note: immigration opportunities for international students, a premise the UK (and the US) have been shying away from.)