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In your leader ("New Hefce boss is on a mergers mission", THES , May 18), you describe the result as universities with "massive student numbers, front-rank research, deep and wide links into the local econ-omy and a position at the top of the education food chain for its region".

This may work positively in London and one or two other major cities as the right of students to choose would not be severely compromised at a time when more and more are, for economic reasons, obliged to study locally. But elsewhere, such an approach could create enormous, and possibly legally challengeable, local monopolies.

Vaughan Grills
Director
Kent Institute of Art and Design