Dated criticism

"Red alert" ( September), your feature on the cost of the government's policies for financing higher education, gives an excellent and balanced account of the issues. It shows why we should all be concerned that the costs have been understated and that some day - perhaps sooner rather than later - the chickens will come home to roost and the budget will need to be balanced.

There is one respect, however, in which the article is dated. Although it acknowledges that the government has now published a version of its financial model, it states that I "remain unhappy" with the action. I am indeed unhappy that it took 15 months and a Freedom of Information request to extract the information from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but I am not unhappy with the result. BIS has done what it promised to do when I withdrew my FoI request, and the published model is sufficient to allow proper analysis.

Bahram Bekhradnia, Director, Higher Education Policy Institute