FOR GOODNESS’ sake, Oxford, stop complaining. Behave like a grown-up university and go independent. Repeat your 17th-century freedom of spirit. Look to the best, to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and do what they do. No more of this moaning and drooling and tugging at Treasury apron strings. Opt for excellence and let the Devil take the hindmost.
Forty years ago the Oxford sage, Lord Franks, returned from rebuilding Europe, setting up Nato and forging a special relationship with America to try something easy. He tried to reform Oxford. He failed. It still defies reform. And where Oxford refuses to lead, Cambridge, London and the rest meekly follow. They have collapsed into the arms of government. They are institutionally dependent. They simply beg for more.
The latest dependency crisis came this week. Oxford has an operating deficit of £20 million and an accumulated deficit on teaching and research of £95 million. The reason is simple. It costs £18,600 a year to teach an Oxford undergraduate, for which the Government allows it half. The gap is filled, in true public sector style, by make-do and whinge.
In desperation, Oxford has decided to imitate the more dynamic London colleges such as UCL, Imperial, King’s and LSE. Since the Government tells them they cannot levy proper fees on British or EU students, foreigners must do. North Americans and Far Easterners know no A-level tables, social class or access regulators. They can be as dumb as they like. Let them only be rich.
For British universities to have the world’s classiest teaching now means having the world’s classiest students. Oxford will cut 1,600 British places to make way for foreigners. To get in, British school-leavers will need stunning high scores and, if Gordon Brown has his way, stunningly poor parents. In a plan worthy of Stalin’s Russia, Mr Brown wants to code exam papers by socioeconomic background of school. Universities will be required to bias their admissions or face fines. They are so craven they will probably obey.
UCL’s undergraduate body is now one third foreign and LSE’s is 65 per cent. These universities are becoming global institutions that happen to be in England. Top-up fees, cause of such political anguish last year, will add a mere 2 per cent to UCL’s income. Yet UCL, like Oxford and Cambridge, is running a deficit. It is saved only by revenue from medical research and training, comprising more than half its budget.
London is a popular city and its universities understandably treat foreign students as gilt-edged. They are not crippled by Oxford’s medieval governance and can organise fund-raising American-style. The difference between an Oxford college dinner and a London one is stark. The one is about enjoyable indulgence, the other is about money.
When Oxford made its Faustian pact with the Exchequer it was doomed. University subsidy began in 1919. A “general strategy” was first promulgated in 1968. But nationalisation came only in 1988 under Kenneth Baker, spurred by Margaret Thatcher’s desire to punish universities for “pushing socialist poison”. Grants gradually turned them first into institutes of economic planning under the Tories and then of social planning under Labour. In 2000 Mr Brown castigated Oxford for not admitting a poor Newcastle girl. His facts were nonsense, but he had the money. Oxford quaked and combed the comprehensive schools to humour his political correctness. Mr Brown retorted with a humiliating “access regulator”.
Europe’s universities are declining against American ones. The reason, The Economist recently concluded, “was their near total reliance on the State”. MIT is the same size as Cambridge but has three times the turnover. Last year’s increase of student fees by just £1,875 to £3,000 a year was the worst of all worlds. Capped until 2010, it was not enough to balance any books, yet enough to undermine institutions eager to break free.
Oxford’s response has been to ape London and “go offshore”, doubling overseas undergraduates from 8 to 15 per cent. The luxurious tutorial system — its virtues hoary with myth — will decline in favour of teaching classes. The university claims it wants “to provide a rather broader diet of teaching and learning opportunities for students” and to “address research productivity issues”. The Stepford Don has arrived. Oxford has stopped speaking English and speaks Treasury.
Universities do not need to “go private”. They are private already. They have autonomous charters and independent governors. Treasury control is bluff, exerted through the power of money. It fixes fees by threatening to withhold grants. Teaching grants are the biggest subsidy to Britain’s middle classes after pensions tax relief. Research grants, mostly to the top ten universities, are sufficiently lavish also to cross-subsidise teaching, thus further increasing control.
Yet for Britain to think it can give £40,000 to £50,000 of almost free higher education to half its population (and much of Europe’s) is fantasy. Hence the steady decline in spending per student. Undergraduates are mostly prosperous or about-to-be prosperous young people. They should pay, as they do in America. Higher education is essentially a private investment, not a public one, whatever no-fees lobbyists may pretend. Public money should concentrate on giving access to poorer pupils.
Such is the screwball state of British politics that all parties are oblivious to equity. Both Tories and Liberal Democrats opposed even the modest means-tested top-up fee. They were desperate not to offend middle-class parents. But if politicians want more poor students to receive higher education, they should give them scholarships.
Top universities such as Oxford should call the Government’s bluff and set their own fees. They should decide for themselves whom to charge and leave the poor to scholarships and the State. Nor will any Government cut off its nose to spite its face by penalising research grants and driving researchers to America. All that is needed is for the big universities to unite to demand a saner university finance.
I sense that the lead will not come from Oxford or Cambridge. There is at present an Oxford cabal of “radical” college heads who gather to break open the port, ritually abuse ministers and plot freedom. They dream of independence like Jacobites toasting the king over the water. Whenever I write about university one of them tells me: “Don’t worry: we’re on the brink.” They have been there for years. Their port is laced with subsidy. It is all Dutch courage.
Oxford’s constitution keeps it leaderless and ensures it goes nowhere but yesterday. The college system means that the university barely exists as a financial entity. In 2003 Oxford raised just £58 million in endowment. Harvard raised £262 million. Harvard’s graduates not only pay for their education but are besieged for money thereafter. I have never been seriously lobbied for a penny by Oxford. The reason is that, like Tony Blair, I went to a wealthy college, St John’s, and was paid for by the State. Like Trinity, Cambridge, St John’s is a richly endowed “virtual university”, with what amounts to a teaching contract from the Treasury. There are others like it. They have no interest in independence because they have it already.
Both Peel and Gladstone lost their Oxford parliamentary seats for advocating reform. The place is, as Franks said, a “two-hatted monster”, a government university composed of private colleges. Franks found the colleges self-satisfied, reactionary and decisive only in indecision. Most still are. They teach for just half a year. Their plant is underused, their staff duplicated. Oxford remains magnificent and accomplished. There is no reason why it should not live for ever. But it should do so on its own. It would be happier that way.
British universities cannot survive in the long term as outposts of central government. They must regain their autonomy. But the first to move will not be Oxford or Cambridge. It will be somewhere in London. When that happens Oxbridge had better look to its laurels.
simon.jenkins@thetimes.co.uk
