Much noise has been made about college wealth disparities since the report last April – mostly negative. The very word ‘disparity’, or ‘inequality’, triggers some of our most visceral feelings – how can people at the same university end up having such a different experience of student life? Yet at the same time, we celebrate the diversity and eccentricity that the collegiate system fosters. Are these two feelings not in tension with each other? Perhaps approaching the issue mindful of this tension will allow a more balanced reflection on the matter.
The collegiate system is surely one of the great strengths of Oxford University. Few are those who do not enjoy comparing and competing over the relative merits of colleges – of their architecture, of their food, of their location. Even fewer, in my experience, are those who dislike their own college. Were we to live on the sterilised campus of one great identikit ‘Oxford University’, we should all imagine ourselves to be less fortunate.
Perhaps, therefore, we ought to approach the issue from this angle: seeing ourselves less as Oxonians and more as members of colleges each with their storied histories, together making up a greater whole. In this light, disparities seem less unacceptable: why, as members of separate, distinct institutions, ought we all to have the same experience as each other?
If we are not so concerned that UCL, say, has a greater endowment than St Andrews, why the concern that Christ Church has more than another college? If we are reluctant to accept this pluralist principle, shouldn’t we be more concerned about redistributing money from wealthy Oxford as a whole towards other universities altogether?
Eccentric differences between colleges don’t just form contribute to their individual character. They may also be a safeguard of Oxford’s future. Many alumni identify more strongly with their college than the University, and donate to their college accordingly. Would they be so generous if they donated to a central university fund, for example, rather than their old institutions? Keeping income streams separate helps maintain this individuality: a donor to Oriel may expect very different use of their gift from a donor to Wadham.
Is this just the rationalisation of a Mertonian who is quite happy with his college’s fortunate endowment? Perhaps. Many of the issues caused by college disparities should certainly concern us all. For all I wax lyrical about the advantages of pluralism, we are all united by taking the same exams and getting the same degrees. Can this really be right when a student at one college has benefited much more from the grants and other non-material perks (better facilities and the like) his peer at a poorer college has not? For many this will be immaterial, but we should not ignore that for some it can make a significant difference.
Likewise, while we may all be proud of our colleges now, how much did we know about colleges’ wealth as applicants? Certainly visiting Magdalen for the first time one cannot but be struck by its grandeur and surmise it to be a wealthy institution, but what of the fine-grained differences in between? And this doesn’t even touch upon pooling, or the intricacies of the allocation system, which remain veiled in mystery.
Perhaps, however, a more pressing concern ought to be the significant disparity in teaching from college to college – rather than wealth. It is of course a great benefit that so many different approaches can be trialled in one university – as Louis Brandeis called the individual states in American federal system ‘laboratories of democracy’, so colleges can be laboratories of education. In my own subject, Classics, I have seen how the lonely efforts of Jesus College in promoting the ‘active method’ of language teaching has encouraged its adoption by other colleges.
Yet on the other hand, it can be deeply frustrating, if not unfair, when one college is seen to take the tuition of its students so much more seriously than another, and even if the difference is merely of teaching style, it is not exactly easy to migrate to a more suitable college. Surely differences in the style and attentiveness of teaching, often separate from wealth, have a greater impact on academic success
The discussion about college disparities, then, raises a much broader question about the merits of the Oxford collegiate system. It seems to me unavoidable that a system which preserves the distinctiveness of its individual parts will necessarily involve some inequality, and that these disparities may result in injustices. Which we value more – uniformity or individuality – informs our politics and indeed our life much beyond the balance sheets of Oxford colleges.
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