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

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* 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

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* 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.

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John Radford

University of East London