That’s a hugely controversial proposal in a country that still clings fiercely to the ideal of providing a free, state-funded education to anyone who merits it. Britain ranks just 16th out of 23 developed countries for higher-education spending, yet its universities are allowed to charge even their richest students no more than $1,600 per year, a quarter of the real cost of study and a figure that pales in comparison with Harvard’s $22,694 annual tuition. Prime Minister Tony Blair wants 50 percent of Britain’s under-30s in full-time education by 2006, and given his no-new-taxes style, universities suspect they’ll be responsible for finding a large proportion of the $15 billion that will cost. Already Oxford is having trouble paying salaries sufficient to attract top teachers; a junior lecturer with a Ph.D. is offered just $23,000 a year, while a full professor gets $68,400–roughly half the salaries of their U.S. counterparts. For Oxford, long the global epitome of top-drawer education, the question is whether the university’s days as a bastion of world-class excellence might be over.
Lately the issue seems to have taken on a new urgency. Blair may himself be a graduate of Oxford, but his government, which subsidizes the university to the tune of $304 million annually, has quite deliberately picked a fight. Two years ago, when the university rejected Laura Spence, a state-school student from the north of England who had stellar grades, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown lambasted the admissions system as “more reminiscent of the old-boy network… than genuine justice in our society.” (Spence wound up at Harvard.) The flap played prominently in British tabloids and highlighted just how vulnerable Oxford remains to charges of elitism. The fact that 93 percent of British schoolchildren attend state-funded schools, yet account for only half of Oxford’s successful applicants, reinforces the impression. Indeed, just last week another mini-scandal seemed to be brewing, as newspapers reported that a 19-year-old deaf student, Anastasia Fedotova, failed to win a place despite high exam scores. Once again, government representatives are demanding explanations.
Oxford denounces these “intrusions” into its academic affairs, further encouraging sentiment within the university that it should go its own way. “More and more people are saying the only solution is independence,” says classics professor Richard Jenkyns, who after 21 years at Oxford will jump ship to Boston University this fall. But it’s unclear how seriously such talk should be taken. Given Oxford’s paltry endowment–just $3.6 billion, compared with Harvard’s $18.3 billion–it would be hard pressed to make up any budgetary shortfall from Whitehall. Raising tuition alone would clearly not do the trick. And unlike their counterparts in the United States, where Princeton last year alone received $70 million from former students, Oxford alumni have proved surprisingly unwilling to convert happy memories into hard-cash donations. Oxford has no figures for such gifts, oddly enough, but total contributions to the university, including those from private companies, amounted to a modest $19.7 million in 2001.
In the end, Oxford may be hoping for some in-between solution. Since 1998 it has been pumping funds into a private company called ISIS Innovation, set up to commercialize researchers’ discoveries. Of a total of 28 fledgling spinoffs, all are still in business. While big payoffs in the form of IPOs are still a long way off, that could quickly change, says managing director Tim Cook “if one of them hits the jackpot.” More immediately, Oxford bigwigs report that permission to charge the full cost of tuition will almost certainly be given in a government report due this November. Oxford still isn’t likely to let business interests run wild over its hallowed greensward. But it is learning that the academic freedom it so prizes can be preserved only at a price.
