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Universities on this side of the Atlantic are also cutting their budgets, but, as at Harvard and MIT, only after taking a long, hard look at how to protect the strengths of their institutions ("An essential equation: saving jobs is a question of fractions for UCU at Sussex", 11 March).

The proposals of the Sussex University and College Union in countering the plan of senior officers to cut the salary costs of about 100 academic jobs provides an opportunity, at last, to do just that. Indeed, it is high time and not yet too late for academics, senior administrators and the university's council to think together about how quality in a Sussex education can be sustained. Would that considered judgement give greater weight to expenditure on new buildings than to 100 academics in the strengths of a Sussex education?

Janet Collett, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (and former lecturer at the University of Sussex).