Click for the accompanying article
"There is nothing so unedifying as hearing the rich claim to be poor," said Lord Desai last week in a parliamentary debate on the extra funding of Oxford and Cambridge universities. His was virtually a lone voice among the ranks of peers who poured scorn on government ministers, threw their plump hands in the air and predicted that the academic sky would fall on their heads and on that of every person in the country if the government went ahead and withdrew £35 million from the two universities. The barbarians were at the gates, they implied, and like their ancestors they were motivated by greed, envy and a desire to debase all that was great. The removal of the extra cash for tuition would lead to the closure of no fewer than 12 colleges at Oxford and 20 at Cambridge. Fine young students would end up in desultory new universities where their ability would be wasted. Not only would they be worse off, but so would the country. The great universities would be neutered and Oxbridge's international reputation would wane.
Even though Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, chancellor of Oxford University, was arguing in a similar vein, it is right to take their concern seriously. The two universities are the pinnacle of our educational system, and while much has deteriorated in schooling in the past 30 years, the top universities have maintained their standards. It is elitist, but then in a meritocracy elitism is good.
There is, however, a fundamental flaw in this argument. Not only are these two institutions immensely rich (they have assets worth an estimated £2 billion), they are also on the fiddle. The source for this startling revelation was no less a figure than Sir Christopher Ball, who negotiated with Whitehall on behalf of Oxford during the 1980s. In that capacity he said he had pulled the wool over the eyes of civil servants for years. "It was," he said, "like taking candy from children." The extra money from the government was in any case only a relatively recent innovation and the universities had survived perfectly well before. His view was that Oxbridge could happily rely on endowment funds from its formidable capacity to raise money.
It could also take another route if it wishes to maintain its tutorial system: charge richer students more and provide extra scholarships for poorer students. This prospect appals the government, largely because it thinks it will make the universities more socially exclusive. But it need not if enough scholarships or cheaper places are made available. The top universities should accept undergraduates on merit, not on which school they went to. If pupils from private schools perform better, they should be selected. It is an incentive to state schools to raise their standards to those of their fee-paying rivals. The aim of state money should be to encourage an Ivy League that cultivates a wide range of skills. All these universities should be centres of excellence, not just Oxbridge. Only then can we have a system that really matches our international rivals.
Go to the next item in the 1997 Oxbridge funding row.