Question of credibility

If a post-92 university chose to pay lip service to widening participation or decided not to participate in the National Student Survey, I'm sure that the tone of your articles "Hefce's grant plan 'perverse'" and "Protests lead to survey omission" (September 2) would have been different.

Why should the credibility of the survey be called into question because Oxford, Cambridge and Warwick universities did not participate? Participation in the survey required precious time and resources from our institution, which conducts its own student survey.

But I imagine that if Nottingham Trent and two other post-92 universities had not been included, the omission would probably have gone unnoticed or would have attracted negative comments about our standards and quality.

Chris Slade
Deputy Head
Centre for Academic Standards and Quality
Nottingham Trent University