Dear Editor,
Regarding your article, Post-Brexit Turing Scheme gives students £22m less than EU’s Erasmus programme (January 19).
The Erasmus scheme presented wonderful opportunities for students open to what it gave them in broadening the mind and experience. Had it been around in my day, many moons ago, I would have jumped at the chance to be a recipient of a place in the scheme. My daughter benefited from it in studying Psychology with French.
The Turing Scheme was always going to be an apology, hastily assembled and ill thought-out to plug the gap. An insult to the name of a brilliant mathematician cruelly served by the British establishment. The problem is the British penchant for mediocrity which showed through from the start. The abandonment of Erasmus was an act of callous criminality in the way it affected young British people.
Paul Harcourt Davies
Umbria, Italy
