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On reading your headline "Pounds 5.8 billion" (THES, September 20), I think a personal reflection may cast some light on this problem. At the end of a working life, I, like Virginia Woolf, ask the question to whom should I give my "three guineas"? Unlike Virginia, I was not denied an education. I had an education every bit as expensive as the one my brother would have had, if I had a brother. It has enabled me to be financially independent all my working life and has allowed me to express myself in my own way as a scientist.

The question I ask myself is, how did this come about? I did my undergraduate degree at Bedford College London. Unusually for the University of London, this college was purpose built and situated in one of the most beautiful parks in central London, Regent's Park. Again unusually for London, it had student accommodation as part of the building. It was said that a certain "strong woman" had in her time contributed her "three guineas" to the foundation of this college.

What was the fate of Bedford College? The site was sold to an American university, which incidentally defaced the front of the building by removing the name Bedford and replacing it with Regent's. Hanover Lodge was sold to the Sultan of Brunei and the college was combined with Royal Holloway College (a journey of at least an hour from central London). I presume the money that was made from selling Bedford College was given to Royal Holloway. In a list of institutions of the University of London whose students and graduates can apply for awards, Bedford College was omitted (Convocation News, University of London, September 1996). The closure of Bedford College and the plundering of its assets is not unique in the United Kingdom. It has been the fate of many other similar institutions.

This year I returned to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I had been a graduate student in the 1960s. Yes, my name was there on the alumni list. I had sailed in their boats on the Charles river in those far-off days. The staff at the boat club said it would still be possible for me to take a boat out again as my name remained on their lists! Although much had changed in the intervening 30 years, much remained the same. They knew of me, and cared about me. I know where I will send my "three guineas".

JUDITH KINDERLERER (nee Goldstein) Food Research Centre Sheffield Hallam University