Home and away

Nick Hillman has overlooked the effect of geographical mobility on social mobility in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (“They would walk 500 miles”, Features, 23 July). Moving to another city also involved, for some of us, moving out of our social class. Persuading all students to stay at home could achieve the same thing, but as long as the elite students can afford to travel and the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and others in the Russell Group are national not regional universities, then to emphasise home study for the less well‑off is to entrench social differentiation.

Farah Mendlesohn
London