The gulf between the wealth and spending power of the individual Oxford colleges is revealed in a new set of accounts published by the university.
Together they own assets of £1.6 billion on top of the value of their buildings but the sums vary from £202 million at St John's, the wealthiest, to £16 million at Worcester and just £1 million at Harris Manchester and Templeton.
But in spite of their wealth, comprised of property in the city and other parts of the country, stocks, shares and endowments, the figures published yesterday show 15 of the 36 colleges recorded deficit budgets. St John's, which made £7.5 million revenue on its assets last year, overspent by £869,000 and St Hugh's by £801,000.
The figures have been produced for the first time this year after the university moved over to a more transparent system of recording its accounts. Cambridge University is to adopt the same model next year. "These accounts reveal what the Student Union has been saying for years: that there are vast inequalities between the colleges and that these need to be evened out if Oxford wants to be able to say that it offers equal provision to all of its students," said John Blake, president of the Oxford University Student Union.
The two biggest inequalities between colleges are the amount of money they distribute in student bursaries and the rents they charge. Pembroke's most expensive annual rent last year was £3,436, for example, compared with £2,392 at St Edmund Hall. The colleges blamed the deficit budgets on the gap between what they received from the Government for their students and the true cost of undergraduate teaching. A spokesman for St John's said it had contributed around £650,000 to a central fund which distributes money from the richest to the poorest colleges.
Dame Fiona Caldicott, the chairman of the conference of colleges, said income on endowments and other activities were used to try to make academic salaries more competitive but they could not match those paid by leading universities in America. She added: "Individual colleges at Oxford are each making a significant contribution to the costs of providing the quality teaching and research for which we are internationally renowned. However, it still remains a fact that extra resources and new ways of raising funds are required to ensure that we remain a world class university."
CLICK FOR OTHER CONTEMPORARY REPORTS ON THE OXFORD COLLEGE ACCOUNTS:
The Financial Times, 7/7/04 (+ table), The Times, 8/7/04 (+ barmy table), The Guardian, 7/7/04 (+ table), The Guardian, 8/7/04, The Oxford Times, 9/7/04 (+ list). See also Sunday Times, 16/11/97, Sunday Times, 28/3/04, THES, 16/7/04 and THES, 1/10/04.
CLICK FOR AKME INVESTIGATION: THE COLLEGES' INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE, 1973-2003
Press release and Index, and Oxford Student, 26/5/05 on the failure of the college contribution scheme.