Dorset has some of the highest performing schools in the country, pinnacle of which is The Thomas Hardye School.

Seeing their students on the march, in Dorchester, took me back to my own student days. We protested against the atom bomb and nuclear weapons proliferation.

Today’s protests are against the proposed changes to funding of degrees outlined by the former chairman of British Petroleum, Lord Browne During my career I felt that my qualifications were valued by my employers. The message sent by Lord Browne to future students is that their education can be outsourced and privatised.

Lord Browne’s report failed to address the true costs, to the student, of gaining a graduate education.

Counting lost earnings during the period of study and the proposed new fees of £9,000 per year gives a three-year degree course a cost of £72,000 and a seven-year medical qualification a cost of £153,000.

These costs need to be repaid and the deficit recovered after tax deductions, over a shorter graduate career than for those who did not pursue further education.

A graduate with a first degree would need to earn an additional £1,846 per annum for life, after tax and a doctor an additional £4,500 per annum after tax, for life, just to break even.

With graduates being targeted for additional taxation, via a Graduate Tax, why are we surprised that an educated, well-qualified, work force is a threatened species in 21st-century Britain?

Britain became great in science, technology, engineering and medicine because of our teaching quality.

Some of our earliest teaching institutions have flourished in Oxford since 1096.

The town boasts 38 excellent colleges, many established centuries ago by wise monarchs and entrepreneurs who valued educated administrators to run business, state and empire. Excellently-qualified British students are being turned away at these universities’ gates due to a shortage of places! Yet we see overseas students enjoying the best our universities have to offer.

Perhaps we would rather Lord Sugar select our future leaders using his ‘hire and fire’ approach to management recruitment. Easy come, easy go!

Not a mention do I hear of a Footballer Tax, or a Pop Idol levy and God forbid we dare mention Bankers’ Bonuses.

Yet our politicians regard a Graduate Tax as ‘fair’ and ‘proper’. For whom, is all I ask?

Hard working, bright British students might consider whether they can continue to support British universities. Perhaps their student loans might go further overseas.

Students could outsource taking their qualifications overseas to a fairer jurisdiction abroad. Avoid the punitive and envious tax jurisdiction the land of their birth has in store for them. Lord Browne should be familiar with this philosophy from his own career.

It might even give him the satisfaction of creating a new ‘Blow Out’, this time of students clamouring to escape his discreditable plans.

If university fees increase to the levels proposed, or graduates are selected for extra taxation, I predict a new ‘Brain Drain’.

Peter A Read, Warmwell Road, Crossways