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As an American teenager, I considered many West Coast and New England institutions, but after a visit to the University of St Andrews, I realised that it was a cheaper option - even with the expense of travel and living abroad.

Attending university in the US is easy only if students are from the lowest brackets of society or the highest. The wealthy can easily pay for their education, and people from the lowest socioeconomic classes can access aid. Those who find it hardest are those who are stuck in the middle; they face paying roughly $50,000 (?31,0) a year for an education of a quality that is hard to gauge.

The US university system must be unique in its insistence on destroying the middle classes and pushing them into penury thanks to the constant financial difficulties they face.

Americans have spent so long ignoring the problems with their own system that it would be shocking if they were to reform it. But England must not follow the US example.

Elizabeth Davis, University of St Andrews.