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In the news story “Plymouth defends ‘£150K spend on seven chairs’ ” (timeshigher­education.co.uk, 20 September), David Coslett, Plymouth University’s deputy vice-chancellor, argues that new graduation furniture was crucial to graduation ceremonies that attracted more than 25,000 students and guests to the city, injecting “around £700,000 worth of additional tourism income” into the local economy. (The university later clarified that the cost of the chairs was £95,000.)

I think the tourism income argument is entirely reasonable. I’m not sure that my family would have attended either of my graduation ceremonies had they not been fairly confident about the presence of fancy chairs.

Martyn Amos
Via timeshighereducation.co.uk