Sir: It is sad to see my former senior Cambridge
colleague, Sir Denis Brogan, attacking the Uni- versity of Stirling (24 January). I do not wish to debate after the event the allocation of re- sources to education which led to the foundation of new universities in this country rather than the expansion of older centres of higher educa- tion. but I do dispute his view that this univer- sity is ill-located and bound to fail from lack of resources.
Sir Denis seems to have been misled by a diagram in our prospectus. The university is not 'miles 'away' from Stirling. It is true that most, but not all, of the campus lies without the Royal Burgh—but in fact the university is nearer to the centre of Stirling than many uni- versities are to the centre of larger cities—and 'quasi-monastic seclusion' is hardly an adequate description of the relations between town and gown in this area.
The more substantial question is whether 'at best Stirling is a badly equipped and not very hopeful liberal arts college.' In this university we would dispute the contention that all uni- versities must train doctors, lawyers and en- gineers: we do, of course, accept that there must be adequate resources for research and have the training of scholars and scientists high among our aims. If Sir Denis believes that £5 million or so would be sufficient to build an attractive liberal arts college, perhaps he will be satisfied with the £9 million of expenditure proposed in our development plan for the university, nearly half of which will have been spent by 1970. I am sure that the university would welcome a visit from Sir Denis to see for himself the facili- ties which we already have and are now build- ing up at this university, to learn about the re- search and post-graduate teaching which is going on and of the innovations in our under- graduate teaching, and to contribute to the fur- ther development of the links between the uni- versity and the rest of the local community.
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