Semester pessimists

I feel compelled to challenge the indiscriminate criticism of semesters expressed by Jennifer Craven-Griffiths (THES, February 24). The problems which she associates with semesters, and by extension modular schemes, are not inherent in such structures but rather a consequence of their poor implementation.

The real culprits are: one, the Government, which has imposed change through coercion; two, those higher education managements who, in the name of "devolution" have dumped the responsibility for change in the laps of their staff without adequate consultation, time or resources; three, academics driven by a perverse nostalgia, who have sought to preserve in the new systems so many vestiges of their old "courses" that the result demonstrates the advantages of neither and accentuates the defects of both.

If semesters turn back into years, years will re-calcify into traditional courses. What then of student choice, empowerment, and responsibility? What then of flexibility, opportunity, self-management of study?

GLYN HAMBROOK

16 Radnor Road

Sedgley, Dudley