Postgrad pluses

Your article "QAA pans uneven postgrad support" (February 16) on the Quality Assurance Agency's review of research degree programmes (RDPs) presented a selective and unrepresentative picture of the findings.

Launching its report on the review at the winter meeting of the UK Council for Graduate Education, the QAA said the overwhelming message was positive and was particularly good in transferable skills development. The conference welcomed the snapshot of work to embed the QAA code of practice on RDPs in the sector.

It is unfortunate that your readers were not given the balanced view of developments that the report portrays. Such skewed reporting serves the sector badly in giving an unjustifiably negative message to our political masters and to prospective research students.

Malcolm McCrae
UK Council for Graduate Education