Glasgow University Court is on the brink of deciding to withdraw from the Dumfries campus. The government quango, the Scottish Funding Council, isn't prepared to continue funding its arts faculty courses here. This disastrous policy will cost up to 40 jobs locally. Worse still, the victims of this cut will be young people from less well-off backgrounds and older mature students whose financial and family circumstances prevent them studying away from home.

Glasgow University Court is on the brink of deciding to withdraw from the Dumfries campus. The government quango, the Scottish Funding Council, isn't prepared to continue funding its arts faculty courses here. This disastrous policy will cost up to 40 jobs locally. Worse still, the victims of this cut will be young people from less well-off backgrounds and older mature students whose financial and family circumstances prevent them studying away from home.

These Doonhamers and Gallovidians will be deprived of a chance to study arts subjects locally and thereby limit the crippling debts that this government has heaped on students since they replaced grants with loans.

The Scottish Executive could save the Dumfries campus by putting up the cash to keep it going. If Jack McConnell will not intervene, we'll have to conclude that Tony Blair's famous "Education! Education! Education!" speech was empty rhetoric. What he really meant was "War! Privatisation! New nuclear weapons!"

Dumfries needs the Glasgow University campus. The Scottish Executive could save it - but will it?
John Dennis, Secretary, Dumfries and District Trades Union Council, 31 Glencaple Avenue, Dumfries

I AM SELDOM at a loss for words, but as the implications of Glasgow University's threat to pull out of the region have sunk in, I have been reduced to stunned silence. Therefore, the facts and figures presented below are not mine. They come from a recent Dumfries and Galloway Economic Survey. They reveal a region that is slowly dying as its lifeblood - our young people - move away.

"The demographic changes forecast over the next 14 years for Dumfries and Galloway follow the pattern seen across the rest of Scotland. However, in this region they are far more pronounced in their severity. Until 2018, the population in Scotland as a whole is expected to decline by 2.4%.

"Over the same period, the population in Dumfries and Galloway is projected to decline by 7.2%, which represents a loss of around 10,000 people over the period.

"This decline is heavily concentrated among the 0-14 age group and 30-44-year-olds. Therefore, as well as a decline in population, Dumfries and Galloway faces continuing changes in the structure of the population. The ratio of the entire population to those of normal working age - sometimes called the dependency ratio - is set to rise rapidly. These projections indicate that the number of people of prime working age (15 to 59 years old) is set to decline by 18%, or well over 1000 people per year.

"The phenomenon of an ageing population is not new, but three features stand out: the dramatic acceleration in the declining number of school-age children, the even more dramatic reversal of the historic upward trend in 30-44-year-olds, and the gathering momentum of growth among the over-70s. The region must get better at retaining young people within the region and attracting skilled incomers to the region."

The report goes on to highlight the vital role the Crichton campus has and will have in "retaining young people within the region and attracting skilled incomers to the region".

To conclude: if we allow Glasgow University to renege on its "covenant" (the Crichton Accord it signed) with Dumfries and Galloway, would the last young person leaving the region please turn out the lights?
Alistair Livingston, 6 Merrick Road, Castle Douglas