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