20 years ago

The principal of Robert Gordon's Institute of Technology, David Kennedy, has launched an attack on "intellectual snobbery" that downgrades the Scottish central institutions because of their vocational bias. "The title of university is still denied us. Not because of our lack of intellectual rigour, or excellence, but because double-think still pervades our national decision-making."

A Japanese student gives a personal impression of British student life: It was not easy to make friends with the Cambridge students compared with the American young people I met last summer. They were a lot more straightforward, open and friendly. They asked questions about Japan, which the young people in Cambridge hardly ever did ... I got the impression that they did not make friends with each other easily either. I often thought my co-students (all lawyers) could be more friendly to each other. I once asked a girl of my college why they could not. "We don't trust each other," she said. That may be true, but at the same time, they seemed to express themselves well to others whom they did not trust.