Sir – Your report and leader about objectionable encroachment by the universities on Oxford’s housing space (July 28) is more than justified.

I cannot speak for Brookes, but as regards Oxford University the case is unanswerable, on academic as well as environmental grounds, not merely for preventing further growth in student numbers, but for cutting them back to where they were a mere decade ago, ie around 16,000 compared with well over 20,000 now.

The huge increase over this brief period, of almost 30 per cent, has been no accident. It consists entirely of postgraduate and international students, who are liable to pay full fees; and it was engineered by the University’s central decision-takers so as to provide funding indirectly for the parallel recruitment of some 450 additional central officials (up from 650 to 1,100) — who of course also have to be housed. None of the additional bureaucrats were intrinsically needed. Their basic purpose has been to tighten central direction of the University’s activities and restrict the scope for individual college and other initiatives.

At the same time, the added student intake tends to be less than highest quality: the best international students go to the top American universities, who offer them full scholarships rather than treating them as cash cows.

Peter M. Oppenheimer, Christ Church, Oxford