New College has netted £55 million in a land deal and is planning to use the windfall to benefit senior academics. The College sold an estate in Buckinghamshire which it had held since 1386 after planning permission was given following 15 years of legal wrangling. In that time the land increased in value from £2000 an acre to over £2,000,000. A third of the increased capital income resulting from the investment of the money will be used to pay the Colleges' 39 fellows a £30,000 bonus over the next three years. Junior fellows at the college will also receive £2,500.
David Palfreyman, New College's bursar said the decision to reward dons had been taken in light of years of low pay. "It would not be in the students' interests for academics here to up and off to America at the drop of a hat," he said. The academic pay problem has not been dreamt up. The government, the University and the unions all recognise that academic pay is adrift by 20 years, but nothing is being done about it," he added.
If academic pay is addressed nationally by the Government then the College has said that it will attempt to take back the extra pay. Alan Ryan, New College's warden, hopes that the bonuses will make the College a more competitive employer. "A lot of universities would pay every person who works here another £20,000 above what we can pay them," he said.
Martin Ceadel, a fellow tutor and Professor of Politics at New, described the College's decision to split the resulting increased income as "reasonable". He believes the payout will keep salaries in line with what it ought to be were there enough funding in the higher education sector. "To ensure the future of good academic life, it is important to avoid pay differentials. Academics are paid less than teachers in private schools," he said. Tim Kaye, the College's JCR President, acknowledged that tutors are a College's most important resource. "This is a good way of recognising that, particularly in the current general climate of underfunding in higher education," he said. "Some students were fairly surprised by the College's plans to spend a significant amount of the money from the land sale on pay," he added.
A number of senior academics at other colleges have criticised New's decision. One don told the Times Higher Education Supplement, "The College exists for charitable purposes. It shouldn't think of itself as a company giving out a dividend." Another academic said, "At the very least, this exacerbates the worrying discrepancies between colleges with academics doing identical jobs receiving widely different remuneration."
Terry Hoad, the honorary secretary of the AUT in Oxford, said that colleges as self governing institutions were free to spend their money as they choose. "There are many disparities in terms of benefits and rewards from college to college. It would be better if they did not exist but unfortunatey they do," he said.
An additional third of the increased capital income will go towards academic development. "New College is already one of the most generous colleges for financial aid to those students that need it," said Palfreyman. He added that the College would not be directing large amounts of the money towards students, saying, "We are not in the business of providing across the board subsidies for the bourgeoisie". Students at New will benefit from increased spending on libraries and the development of cross disciplinary academic activities as a result of the increased revenue. The final third of the money will be spent on repairing a roof on a 14th century building in the College.