51³Ô¹Ï

Student dropout rates are now about 20 per cent ("UCAS accused over dropouts", THES, September 3) and research is in hand to discover the reasons. It is indeed a puzzle.

I was recently asked to advise the government of Lilliput, which for reasons of its own wishes to raise its university dropout rate. I told them: n Greatly increase the student intake

* Select them by means known to be invalid and unreliable

* Reduce funding so that they find it hard to make ends meet and incur large debts

* Reduce salaries of academics to a fraction of what other professionals get

* Fill their time with bureaucracy so that they cannot attend to students individually

* Regularly harass them with factory-style assessments whose main results are mountains of paper and high levels of anxiety

* Reduce the value of degrees in obtaining employment

* Keep universities short of funds so that accommodation, equipment and libraries deteriorate steadily.

Of course Lilliput bears no resemblance to Britain, and the puzzle remains.

John Radford

University of East London