Letter: Solid business plan for Shrewsbury university has not been thought out

However, the benefits to the national economy and the value for money to the tax/rate payers who will ultimately finance this project, from local rates and national taxes via the Higher Education Funding Council and student fees (less than half of which are repaid) are highly problematic.

The key flaw is the parochial perspective. Universities have to operate in a highly competitive market place for students, academic staff and researchers. The need for yet another university should be based essentially on an analysis of the relationship between national higher education and national labour markets. This has not been assessed.

Public investment in new universities face diminishing returns – see the university league tables where the lower positions are dominated by newer universities delivering low quality outcomes.

There are 120 universities plus another 40 higher education institutions in the UK delivering degree and post-graduate courses to a student population of 2.3 million.

While the national economy has been growing in the recent years, improved productivity which one would expect from a more educated population, has not been a source of that growth.

Most tellingly, 25 per cent of graduates are still looking for a job after a year.

At the non-graduate end of the labour market, the evidence is of a shortage of adequately trained technical and vocationally skilled young people, dramatically reflected in the waves of EU migrants filling skilled and semi-skilled positions.

From the physical planning point of view, it is hard to think of a worse site for a new university than an historical town crammed into a series of river loops. Universities need space and lots of it for a dedicated campus and student accommodation.

Chester University is scattered all over the place with student rented housing having taken over, residents say blighted, residential streets. Even 2,000 students would submerge the historical character of downtown Shrewsbury and in particular of Frankwell, the proposed student residential sink.

A formal business case has not been prepared and decisions are being made on the back of research and judgements which in my experience as an economist are glaringly inadequate.

Ray Purcell, Ellesmere