A powerful lobbying campaign to defend the financial privileges of Oxford and Cambridge universities was upset yesterday by the admission of a former college head that academic bursars have been hoodwinking governments for the past 20 years.
Sir Christopher Ball, Oxford's chief negotiator in the 1980s, said the universities consistently outsmarted civil servants to secure excessive annual increases in the "college fee", a special subsidy to support the Oxbridge tutorial system, currently worth £35 million a year. "We were shocked at the way the Government didn't do its job looking after the public interest. It was like taking candy from children and it was not much fun. What we did was indefensible in moral terms. It was a form of corruption that was never intended because we were not corrupt people. But it turned into corruption and we can't afford for our two major universities to be tinged with dishonesty," he said.
His admission came at a private meeting of college bursars last week. Although no text of Sir Christopher's speech was available, he confirmed the remarks in An interview with the Guardian yesterday. The disclosure came on the eve of a House of Lords debate called by supporters of the two premier universities who want to stop the Government cutting the public subsidy. The college fee, which pays for the one-to-one tutorial system at Oxbridge, is worth about £2,000 per student.
The Chancellor Gordon Brown and Education Sdecretary David Blunkett are understood to want to divert at least some of the money to maintain standards at other universities and colleges when tuition fees are introduced next year. But the Prime Minister Tony Blair is urging caution after coming under pressure from Oxford, his former university.
Tory peers said they intended to accuse the Government of indulging in "the mean politics of envy". Baroness Blatch, the Conservative education spokeswoman in the Lords, said the two universities would try to maintain standards bv charging top-up tuition fees, restricting access to poorer students.
But Sir Christopher, the 62-year-oid chairman of the National Campaign for Learning, said: "Nobody who has any knowledge of the two universities really believes that Oxford and Cambridge cannot cope with the ending of publicly funded college fees by using college endowments and fundraising strengths." He told the bursars they were likely to win this round of the battle. It would be too embarrassing for ministers, civil servants and college heads to tell how public monev had been pumped into the two universities.
The colleges had been able to bamboozle successive governments about cost increases to justify higher fees, while diverting their endowment income into accumulating more assets, he said. There will be a fudge. In public you will say it's shocking, but privately you will think it's not bad. And the whole thing will be put to bed. But in the long term you will lose." The colleges had mounted a "derisory" argument for keeping tutorial system subsidies. "You are not in 1997 going to reach agreement that it is an appropriate use of public funds to allow some of the ablest people in the land to be taught one-to-one. Nationally we are trying to extend participation to 40 or 50 per cent of young people and, in the long term, one-to-one tuition cannot be a proper use of public funds," he said.
A spokesman for Oxford Universitv said of Sir Christopher's comments: "To select some jocular and deliberately provocative remarks to bursars from a wide-ranging speech on the Dearing report does little to contribute to serious discussion." But Sir Christopher said he was not joking. "I am serious about helping this nation turn itself into a learning society. To do that we have to bring costs down in higher education."
NO ONE likes losing a perk. Today the House of Lords will resound with arguments in support of the special subsidy which Oxbridge receives to support its one-to-one tuition teaching system. Oxbridge has been under threat before but this vear the threat is much more serious. The Dearing report into higher education finance set out two conditions which had to be met before a variation in the level of public funding for university teaching could be justified: an approved difference in the quality of provision: and a decision by ministers that compared to other higher education funding needs, the expenditure represented a good use of resources. It suggested the Government review the "substantial addition" which Oxbridge colleges receive against this criteria. Ministers have instructed the Higher Education Funding Council to look at alternatives. It is due to report shortly.
Both Oxford and Cambridge have produced substantial briefing notes. It was not difficult. Modestly for a university founded six centuries ago, Cambridge restricted its achievement to the last century. Oxford did not even bother with that. Both have more than enough current day achievements to boast about; the record number of departments receiving the top five star grading in the 1996 research assessment exercise, numerous scientific breakthroughs which have been achieved, and the "spinoff" companies which have emerged from these centres of scientific excellence. If any doubters remain there are the prizes to prove it: the list of Nobel awards, British Academy and Royal Society fellowships which the two universities have collected. Significantly less space is spent in the briefings justifying the unique tuition system, which unlike even seminars, does not allow a single individual to shrink from setting out their own thoughts both orally and in written essays every week.
So who would want to reduce their extra subsidies? Most of Britain's 100 other universities. Even Oxbridge concedes the college fees earn it an extra £20m or almost £1,500 extra per student - at a time when higher education funds have been cut by 40 per cent per pupil in the last two decades with further cuts in the pipeline. Dearing signalled his succinct disapproval of the unequal treatment in the summer. More seriously, even within Oxbridge the special subsidy is under attack. Our education editor reports today that Sir Christopher Ball, former bursar of Lincoln, suggests the two universities are defending the indefensible. Oxbridge cannot pass the Dearing test. There are various options if Oxbridge wants to protect its tutorial system: a more radical redistribution between the rich and poor colleges of their large private endowments: new fund raising appeals to well placed alumnae; or restructured top-up fees with scholarships for poor students. What they shouldn't do is sit on privilege and defend their perks.
This week David Blunkett and Tessa Blackstone will decide whether to put a stop to the anomaly in the higher education funding system that gives Oxford and Cambridge £35 million more a year than other universities. It is not the biggest or the most difficult decision they will take but the message it sends out will be missed by no one.
It is not an old Labour versus New Labour issue or even a Conservative versus Labour issue. It is about an establishment group trying to enshrine a manifestly unfair system. Whether you are New Labour, as I am, or any other political shade, the wrong thinking behind a system that gives the richest universities the most must be self evident. I have a lot of admiration for Lord (Roy) Jenkins, now the Chancellor of Oxford, but when he tells the Guardian that "if you are going to have world-class universities you cannot avoid a certain amount of elitism," I know he is scratching around for a defence of the indefensible.
The issue at stake here is not whether Oxbridge should educate the elite but why all those other universities should lose out on their behalf. We are, of course, lucky to have Oxbridge and no one to my knowledge is suggesting this change to the funding system in order to try to destroy it. If I seriously believed that a university like Oxford with assets worth £1 billion, would be harshly affected by losing £35 million, then I would reconsider. Arguing in favour of elitism can, of course, be done for virtually every other institution in the country. The civil list was defended for years on the grounds that it helped us have a world-class monarchy and could not be cut. Subsidies to public schools and the opera are defended in a similar way.
Yet behind this tea room debate are hard facts. Public services are cash starved. Many of them and - for example many of the other universities in our system - find it difficult to raise funds outside the public purse and so are reliant on their annual grant. Most of them serve the many in our country, not the few. Thus to argue that Oxbridge, universities with great actual and potential fund-raising ability, should come ahead of say Leicester in the money queue, is about as far from utilitarian public policy as it is possible to get. And that really is the crux of the matter. Should we divert £35 million to insure that as many people as possible in our country have the opportunity of a good education, or should we dedicate it to gold plating an already world class service for the few?
Some, like Lord Dahrendorf, believe this view is simply the politics of envy; "it is ridiculous to think that reforming a university with 10,000 students is going to make a difference to the class system," he says. Quite so, but no one, to my knowledge, is suggesting that. Rather, this will be the first step in a shift of public policy towards maximising the educational opportunities of all our people. That is not envy, in a global economy it is common sense.
Perhaps the most outrageous argument against this change is that Oxbridge tuition fees would have to be increased above the national average to meet any shortfall. This is deployed at the same time as Oxbridge tries desperately to demonstrate its willingness to recruit from state schools. Higher tuition fees would sink their genuine efforts to bring in more working-class kids. The truth is that Oxbridge has always been in favour of a system of differentiated tuition fees in order that they can exploit their strength in the higher education market. Such a move would shatter forever the basis of higher education in this country. It must be resisted at all costs. Oxbridge will continue to raise enormous sums from fundraising and from its capital assets. It is a brand in its own right.
Looked at in detail the rationale for the present scheme is a joke. The extra money is for collegiate universities. Durham and a few others also get some money, although the mass goes to Oxbridge. They in turn distribute it largely to the wealthy colleges in a bid to maintain standards. Poor colleges get very little. This is a misuse of public money, it is unfair, unjust and serves very little purpose. David Blunkett must stand up to the fearsome pressure that will no doubt be brought to bear on him in the coming week from the massed forces of establishment Britain.
Ian Corfied is Research Director of the Fabian Society
Go to the next item in the 1997 Oxbridge funding row.