Is the sent letter grammatical and meaningful?

Dear Sir,
I should be grateful if you let me know whether this letter is grammatical and meaningful in English?As there are no native English speakers here your help is highly appreciated.
Dear Ali,
How are things going at Melbourne University? Please don’t get surprised! While I was searching for some information on the Internet I accidentally came across your name on a list of students at Melbourne. You must be so proud of yourself. Of course, I am proud of you, too.
Anyway, it’s been a long time since we last saw each other. I suppose you are busy with your doctoral thesis these days. By the way how’s your family? Has your little daughter learnt to talk in English?
It might be a bit of shock to say that some things at university here has unbelievably begun to change. Perhaps you’ve already heard about it as they say, ‘ Bad news travels fast.’ The number of new students has dramatically decreased this year. This has affected the number of credit hours that could be given to each instructor. Unfortunately, due to lack of enough students the university has had financial troubles. As a result, they were unwillingly forced to show the door to some of the college instructors. Of course, the faculty members are an exception to this unwelcome decision- till when nobody knows! What is clear is that the university has faced a crisis in the number of the students as well as the instructors it has in general. There is no doubt that the faculty members and those with PhD degrees would face no problem. Besides, the university still needs PhD degrees in quite a few fields of study.
They say, ’ No news is good news’. So sorry for giving you the news!
"If people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news" [Andy Warhol]
Send me a picture of yours plz, if possible.
P.S. My wife says hello to your family.
Warm wishes,
Nader