Cranfield top dog in industry funding

You report (THES, November 4) that "The biggest beneficiary of industry's largesse is Nottingham, which pushed last year's top dog, Imperial College, into second".

While not wishing to detract from Nottingham's achievement in earning Pounds 6.29 million, I am obliged to point out that during the same year Cranfield University earned Pounds 10.61 million for research from British industry. This is more than 50 per cent above both Nottingham and Imperial (Pounds 6.2 million) and almost exactly equal to the combined industrial "largesse" received by Cambridge (Pounds 5.94 million) and Oxford (Pounds 4.79 million).

My information comes from an impeccable source: The THES (July 8, 1994).

The figures are presumably taken from the Universities Statistical Record which includes only those universities formerly funded by the Universities Funding Council; they do not therefore include, for example, Cranfield, the Open University and the RCA universities since 1969 nor any of the former polytechnics.

Not everyone reads the USR small print.

FRANK HARTLEY vice chancellor Cranfield University.