Outgoing Vice-Chancellor John Hood expressed his grave concern about the University’s finances at his outgoing speech.
Hood called many university facilities “unfit for purpose” and claimed that an investment of £1 billion will be needed to raise them to “world-class” standard. He also revealed that the University is budgeting for a loss this year, with an £8000 shortfall per undergraduate in funding the tutorial system.
These announcements overshadowed the news that the ‘Campaign for Oxford’, the University’s fund-raising initiative of five years, has raised over £120 million in the last year. Its total now stands at £770 million.
John Hood commented, “Across the disciplines, many of the University’s facilities remain unfit for purpose for the current and projected levels of research undertakings and graduate study. By my calculation, the investment that would be required to bring the University’s estate up to world-class standards for its current activities is quite considerably in excess of £1 billion.”
“If that is to be achieved during the next decade or so, considerable funding ingenuity and organisational development will be required. This is at a time when colleges too have substantial capital funding demands.”
The University was unable to say either which facilities were “unfit for purpose” or how the figure of £1 billion was calculated.
“Unfortunately we are unable to comment on the remarks made by John Hood as these are his own views,” said a statement.
Dr Hood also highlighted the £8 million loss the University is expecting to make this year commenting, “For the fourth year in a row the University is budgeting for a loss, again in the vicinity of £8 million or around 1 per cent of revenues. The situation is serious for the physical sciences and even more serious for the humanities … College budgets too are under pressure owing, in particular, to endowment volatility.”
Hood said the funding of the tutorial system costs £8,000 more per year per undergraduate than is received in tuition fees. He criticised other universities for increasing their intake of foreign students simply to raise more in fees.
“Unlike some of the leading Russell Group universities, Oxford has not (to date) succumbed to the temptation to fill out its teaching revenues by very substantially increasing its proportion of full-fee international undergraduates at the expense of Home/EU student numbers.
“Neither has it resorted to reducing its teaching costs by disproportionately placing responsibility for undergraduate teaching with graduate students and temporary college lecturers, although the pressure to do so is intense.
“From a financial perspective these are genuinely worrying times. Government budgets are over-stressed and endowments are extremely volatile, as are the markets for our entrepreneurial activities.”
Alistair Strathern, a second year PPEist said, “I would never complain at the prospect of better facilities, but as long as it wasn’t at the cost of higher fees which would inevitably deprive the opportunity of studying at Oxford to those who need it most.”
On the subject of the shortfall in funding for the tutorial system he added, “Given that we’ve managed to fund tutorials for centuries, it seems strange to have a pressing lack of funding for it.”
