Oxford University seems to be on New Labour's hit list. It is said that Baroness Blackstone's great hope with the Labour landslide of May 1997 was to be appointed a Foreign Office minister so that she could fulfil her ambition to eviscerate the diplomatic service. Thwarted on being appointed minister for higher education, she consoled herself with the thought that at least she could eviscerate Oxford and Cambridge. As I retire after some eight years as a Head of House, I ask myself how successful she has been.
The British suffer because they have little idea what universities are for. They are confused about the difference between excellence and elitism, and between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Since Tony Blair adopted the agenda of John Smith without his vision, New Labour has been running a poor manís Cultural Revolution, attacking the icons of the establishment without any long-term alternative. Oxbridge has suffered along with the civil service, the medical profession and the legal professions. Since all societies - Marxist, capitalist and even presumably the Third Way - require something which other societies are not embarrassed to call an elite, it remains to be seen who will play this role in Cool Britannia. Beyond Geri Halliwell it is difficult to see.
Oxford is a maddening place. It is inward-looking and complacent. But it provides a superb undergraduate education, and in some areas a good graduate education. It also produces serious research.
No doubt Oxford is in considerable need of reform, but since 1945 there has been a remarkable process of democratisation. It has become open to first-rate academic talent, irrespective of background. The problem has been that academic preparation in the state sector has been in steady decline. Different Labour governments - sometimes with the tacit support of Conservatives - have destroyed the academic infrastructure in the secondary schools, the grammar schools and the direct-grant schools. Whatever the social justifications, it has become much more difficult to run a serious academically oriented university in England. The dumbing down of A-levels, much as it is denied, is a reality which means that many students no longer have the academic background that was once the basis of an Oxford honours degree. In admissions, Oxford does reasonably well with sixth-form colleges and trendy comprehensives; with the 'bog standard comprehensive' it does poorly. New Labour assumes, nonsensically, that this is Oxford's fault rather than the fault of poor secondary education. Oxford has discouraged the third year of sixth form and a rigorous admissions exam in order to help state schools. The changes have harmed Oxford without significantly helping state-school students.
Oxford's sometimes embarrassed efforts to be socially inclusive, rather than looking to reforms in secondary education, make it politically vulnerable. Gordon Brown was thus able to engage in vindictive attacks on Magdalen over the Laura Spence case, and this enabled members of the Cabinet from Mo Mowlam to John Prescott to attack elitism in the leading universities. Universities are, however, elite institutions. Their undergraduate programmes are designed to train leaders. Last winter we had part of the Cabinet demanding that Oxford admit a wider socio-economic range of students, and another part of the Cabinet, led by Robin Cook, announcing that Oxbridge students would be discriminated against in the foreign service. It is an odd way to run a country.
Under pressure from Baroness Blackstone, the Oxford college system has been dramatically weakened. Colleges at Oxford were almost certainly too strong, yet in the federal university it has been the commitment to undergraduate education by the colleges that has made Oxford distinctive and, thus far, has also kept Oxford in the league of international universities. This government has achieved the goal of weakening the colleges by various devices. By far and away the biggest change was Baroness Blackstone's abolition of the college fee. Basically, Oxford was singularly (and probably unfairly) advantaged by having an additional fee, in addition to the block grant to the university. The money - a reduced sum - is now paid through the university, which is under a moral, but not a legal, obligation to pass it on to the colleges. Over a ten-year period, Oxford will lose nearly a third of its teaching income. But, to ensure that Oxford has to depend on government and begging (known as fundraising), Blackstone also outlawed top-up fees. The political advantages of this are obvious to all parties. (Voters, even the wealthier ones, do not want to pay, despite the proven financial advantages in earning power for the minority of students attending universities.) To kill the college fee may have been justified. To ban top-up fees was economically and academically vicious. Students and parents may be delighted, but Oxford, along with other leading universities, will continue its genteel decline.
When one considers the resources of the colleges and the central university, and the relative success in research support, Oxford has so much to be grateful for. The benchmark of an international university, however, is now the leading American research university. Coming back from lecturing at Yale earlier this year, I found myself suddenly face-to-face with the increasing discrepancies between the Ivy League and Oxford.
Princeton has $2 million of endowment for every student - graduate and undergraduate. No undergraduate is now excluded because of financial need; graduate students are paid salaries. At Oxford we are beginning a primitive bursary scheme, and graduate support is often derisory. Dons are grossly underpaid; Princeton professors are generously supported. At Yale Law School the library is now open 24 hours a day during term, staffed professionally. I returned to Oxford to find the Bodleian talking of closing at 7 p.m. rather than 10 p.m. I never cease to marvel at the wonderful provisions and intellectual excitement at the institute at Princeton, and the think-tank at Stanford. I returned to find All Souls, which comes closest to having the resources to be the centre for the study of humanities in England, taking pleasure in issuing a press release about its fellows dancing around its quadrangles under the leadership of a wooden duck.
There is so much that is good in English higher education, and so much that is good at Oxford, but inward-looking complacency in the university, and mindless political opportunism in New Labour, may well be doing damage which will be impossible to repair. Tessa Blackstone, at least, must be delighted.
MINISTERS have Oxford University on a "hit list" and may have already done it irreparable damage, a retiring college master said yesterday.
Robert Stevens, who left Pembroke College last month, has been a longstanding critic of conservatism at Oxford. But writing in The Spectator he said that the Government was accelerating the university's decline. He accused Baroness Blackstone of setting out to "eviscerate" Oxford and Cambridge universities as Higher Education Minister. She "must be delighted" with the outcome, he said.
Charges of elitism explain the Government's attitude, Mr Stevens argued. "Oxbridge has suffered along with the Civil Service, the medical profession and the legal professions." He added: "The British suffer because they have little idea what universities are for. They are confused about the difference between excellence and elitism, between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome."
Among the ministerial assaults cited were the rerouting and gradual reduction of the fees paid to colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, criticism over the rejection of Laura Spence's application and the announcement of "discrimination" against the universities' graduates in the Foreign Office. Mr Stevens wrote: "There is so much that is good at Oxford, but inward-looking complacency in the university and mindless political opportunism in new Labour may well be doing damage which will be impossible to repair."
Mr Stevens, who has returned to his legal practice since retiring from Oxford, said: "Maintaining the excellent tutorial system has become extraordinarily difficult since the Government killed the college fee. It has put poorer colleges under enormous pressure, forcing them to beg, to take a lot of overseas students and to charge Americans astronomical rates for short courses. That cannot be the way to run a great university. All Britain's leading universities are being prevented from competing internationally by the Government's ban on "top-up" fees, he said. No vice-chancellor can stand up and admit that his university is worse than it was ten years ago, but the reality is that there is a genteel decline."
The remarks come soon after Neil Rudenstine, outgoing president of Harvard University, was reported to have told postgraduates: "If you look at the trajectory of Oxbridge, it's a disaster, a nightmare." Oxford and Cambridge had suffered "consistent and persistent deterioration" because of inadequate funding. The sad reality is that in Britain even Oxbridge is suffering because of the lack of resources and private-sector involvement. There is just too little all the way round."
Cambridge University and its colleges are worth at least 400 million pounds more than Oxford, The Times Higher Education Supplement reports today. A survey of all universities' assets shows the two ancient universities well ahead of their rivals.
Cambridge's colleges have assets of 1.5 billion pounds and the university 1.2 billion pounds. The equivalent figures for Oxford are between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion pounds for the colleges and 807 million pounds for the university. Harvard's assets are put at 13.3 billion pounds. An Oxford spokesman denied that the university was inward-looking or complacent, citing a series of recent developments, including reform of management structure. "The university enjoys good relations with the Government. They have just helped us set up the world's first institute dedicated to examining the socio-legal and economic impact of the Internet, and education ministers have been extremely supportive of our summer school."
1. Cambridge £1.2 billion
2. Oxford £807 million
3. Edinburgh £685 million
4. Glasgow £407 million
5. Birmingham £406 million
6. King's College London £365 million
7. Imperial College, London £349 million
8. Bristol £319 million
9. UCL £312 million
10. Manchester £255 million
Go to the next item in the Oxbridge funding row or for related articles: 170 Guildhalls on UK universities' disparities, THES 13&20/7/01; Falling behind US Rudenstine's rant, The Guardian 10/7/01; Oxbridge, home of slow learners, The Times 17/7/01.