Spending per head at Oxford is unpredictable. The graph on the previous page shows how JCR spending varies dramatically between colleges and PPHs. On top of this, however, students also receive a sum of around £36 per year per head on average from OUSU. C+ wondered how this compared nationally.

Cambridge students, given their familiar JCR support system, find themselves in a similar situation. With Student Union spending of around £561,000 in 2011-2012 according to official CUSU accounts, those at ‘the other place’ can expect around £31 annually per person from their union. Again, variable JCR spending means the amount each student has spent on them in total will vary.

At fellow collegiate university Durham, individual students get a much larger £108 every year, with Durham Students’ Union (DSU) spending £1,771,495 in total in the academic year 2012-2013 according to officially published accounts. It is worth noting, however, that DSU has a much more active presence in Durham than OUSU and CUSU do at their respective universities, with JCRs carrying much less of the financial burden.

When it comes to non-collegiate universities, students also seem, on the whole, to be benefitting from more student union spending than Oxbridge. Freedom of Information requests reveal that the University of Sunderland Student Union spent around £20,000 less than the £1,500,000 raised in 2013. As a result, around £87 per head is spent on students every year, more than at many Oxford colleges — OUSU contributions included.
Lancaster University Student Union’s (LUSU) figures show officers had £8,390,000 to spend on students in the academic year between 2013 and 2014, meaning that £670 is spent per head. It should be noted, however, that LUSU plays a significant role in providing accommodation for students, explaining the much higher spending — and income. London universities also spend more than Oxford. The body representing King’s College London students, for example, spends almost £139 per person, according to publicly available statistics 2013/2014.

Whilst the combined annual spending on an Oxford student is likely to be lower than the spending of student unions at other universities, Oxford students gain financially in other ways. More generous bursaries, accommodation that is cheaper and often guaranteed for the duration of their course, and reasonable food are all advantages which make up for lower JCR and OUSU spending.

This investigation also includes Tom Carter describing the role of a JCR treasurer, Alex Stronell examing how different JCRs give to charity and Charlie Atkins comparing student union spending at Oxford to other universities. 

When deciding to launch an investigation into how different JCRs spend their money, C+ knew that there was quite likely to be a fair amount of variation between different JCRs, due to the nature of the collegiate system. In terms of the method in which the investigation was conducted, we emailed every undergraduate JCR President, over this term and the last, asking if they would be willing to answer ten questions concerning their budget. This included how much they spend, how they spend it, how the budget is funded, how they use levies, and how much their JCR gives to charity.
What we found was that in broad terms JCRs across Oxford offer fairly similar services to their members, but spend substantially different amounts of money. Therefore, despite forums such as the JCR Presidents’ Committee (‘PresCom’) in which best practise can be shared, it turns out that the college you are at really does matter after all.

For the most part, we found JCRs perform similar functions and responsibilities. All of the JCRs that were willing to speak to us seemed to share a core set of services. Typically, JCRs seem to spend around half of their money on welfare and entertainment. We also found that many — although not all — of the JCRs we spoke to offer a number of amenities in their common room, including newspapers, coffee, a pool table, or Sky television.

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10305%%[/mm-hide-text]

However, C+ found a level of variation both in how much different JCRs spend per student, and how much they save per student. Most JCRs told us that they were predominantly reliant on college grants for funding, with JCR levies acting as an additional form of income. For instance, St Peter’s JCR has a £5 levy for membership. Of the colleges who spoke to us, the only partial exception was Balliol JCR, with most of their headline figure for how the JCR is funded being constituted from the profits of the bar and café. It was quite common for JCRs to operate a levy for punting, with Balliol, Trinity, St Peter’s and Worcester (amongst others) all telling us they did this. Other levies we encountered included charity levies, which Corpus Christi JCR uses to raise £9,000 for charity annually.

We also found that Balliol JCR had far greater savings than any other JCR. An explanation for this may lie in the fact that Balliol JCR directly runs its own bar and café. This means Balliol JCR has a much higher turnover than most of the colleges to whom we talked — in the region of £250,000, and consequently a reserve of £100,000 — also much larger than the others. By comparison, Corpus Christi JCR reported the fewest savings, with only £6,000. In addition to savings, Balliol and Magdalen JCRs mentioned having additional assets, mainly in art, valued at several hundred thousand pounds, which no other JCR reported.

Despite all this seemingly copious spending, in terms of the financial health of Oxford’s JCRs, all those to whom we spoke seem to be operating a small budget surplus, or were aiming for a balanced budget. For example, Balliol JCR, we were told, have had a small budget surplus for around 10 years. However, this is not to say that JCR budgets are all roughly the same size. JCRs are divisible into three rough categories: low spenders, medium spenders, and high spenders.

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%10304%%[/mm-hide-text]

Low spenders include Teddy Hall and Trinity JCRs. These both share the characteristic of authorising over half of their expenditure through JCR motions, meaning that members of these colleges exercise stronger direct control over how their JCRs spend their money, potentially explaining why their overall spending appears lower.

In contrast, medium spenders, such as the JCRs of Balliol, Corpus Christi, LMH and St Peter’s appeared to spend more overall on core services, particularly welfare.

Meanwhile, what distinguished high spenders, such as Magdalen JCR, was the size of discretionary spending, with £8,700 spent on general meetings at the College in the academic year 2013/14 — although the budget allocation for 2014/15 for this item was greatly reduced, at £3,500. In addition, like the medium spenders, the high spenders also spent a greater amount overall on core services.

All that being said, it is worth noting that the real determinant of JCR spending is not, in fact, the preference of their members, but how much colleges provide in grants to students, particularly if JCRs do not run their own bars or cafés, and so have only minimal independent income.

Before writing this piece, I processed some JCR payments for Freshers’ Week. For that seems to be most of what a treasurer does: logging into Barclays online, setting up a payment, processing the payment through a damned card reader, reprocessing the payment when you fuck it up, logging the payment in an Excel spread sheet and, well, doing the process again. It is not, to be honest, very exciting. Sometimes, if you are very lucky, you get to set a budget for something and that’s a real petty power rush to the head.

Despite only starting the job this term, I have already worked out the pressure points: doing the accounts up and organising levies. Being a historian, accounts aren’t really my thing — and as always, the devil is in the detail. If the numbers don’t add up, there are only two potential reasons: a) I have been secreting away money to fund my debauched lifestyle, or b) there is some minuscule error in the middle of the spreadsheet which will take hours of pointless cross-checking to find. Fun, eh?

The Treasurer occupies a very weird position on any JCR committee. Ostensibly they are one of the most involved members of it, yet they seem to have very little to do with anyone else on the committee except to pay their bills. Indeed, contact with ordinary members of the JCR is even more limited unless it suddenly occurs to one of them that what the JCR really needs is a pinball machine. At JCR meetings, it seems like my only function is to nod, like one of Trotter’s fellow pigs in Animal Farm, at everything the President says. Loyal lieutenant some might say, window-dressing others.

Yet, despite all this inanity, the one important thing the Treasurer does have is financial responsibility for the assets of the JCR. For, if it all goes bust on your watch, then the consequences go beyond you feeling a little guilty. Bops would stop, charities would go unfunded, and NUS demos unsponsored.

However, in many cases, such as mine, the problem is quite the reverse, and the JCR spends too little money, accumulating hoards of electronic gold. But built up capital, necessary to some extent in case of emergency, is useless in helping hard-working students in need.

So the question arises of what to do with the excess capital. The previous Treasurer and I have both had the pleasing task of attempting to ‘spend down’ the JCR’s savings (we had savings of £20,000 at one stage, and that was on top of money coming from college). We got rid of the punt levy and started paying for punting with JCR savings, which meant that all members of the JCR, no matter how broke, could engage in this quintessential Oxford experience.

But despite the promise of physical wealth implied by the title, being treasurer is a pretty dull job. The treasure in question is but an Excel spreadsheet and an online bank account, hardly the stuff dreams are made of. The key thing about the job is to make sure that there is enough money left for emergencies, but not so much that students are missing out because of it. But other than that, it is relatively small fry: nothing to write home about, or even to Cherwell…

The varying approaches of colleges towards charitable donations are reflected strongly in their budgeting. Almost half of the JCRs that spoke to C+ told us that they operated a voluntary charity levy, normally of between £5 and £10, with students deciding where to donate the money at JCR meetings.

“The charity levy at Trinity is generated once a year to, unsurprisingly, raise money for charity. Each member of the JCR is charged £10, except for those who have opted out, a number which tends to be very low,” explained Tom Carter, treasurer of Trinity College.

He added, “All the money goes into a charities account and at the last JCR meeting of each term, people can put forward motions on which charities to support and on how much each of them should be given. The JCR then votes using an AV system on which charities to support. Simple.”

However, a small majority of JCRs told C+ that although they did not allocate a specific proportion of their budget to charity, or place a charity levy on members of the JCR, they had a Charity Rep to oversee fundraising and donations.

LMH JCR President Aadit Shankar told C+, “Because LMH is a registered charity we cannot simply allocate some of our annual budget to other charities. Instead, we try to create a culture of charity and generous giving within the undergraduate body with events and campaigns throughout the year. LMH participates in the university-wide RAG events, and has a charity committee comprised of staff, students and academics which meets regularly during term time to organise events.”

Likewise, some colleges, whilst not allocating money directly to charity, provide cash for fundraising events to be held. Oriel JCR President Kit Owens explained, “The JCR’s Charities Rep organises a number of charity events each term, including bake sales, charity formals, charity auctions and casino nights. Money from the JCR budget is used to facilitate those events.”

Oriel JCR Charities Rep Zara Milne remarked, “Last year our most successful fundraisers were probably the Charity Las Vegas Night — which involved a RAG casino and a charity auction — and the college Live Below the Line campaign, which raised over £2,000 for Afrikids.”

Some JCRs, however, stressed that their charitable donations came both from their students’ fundraising efforts and through voluntary levies. Worcester JCR told C+ that the Charity Rep was allocated £100 towards fundraising per term, and over the course of the year, students had raised £6,400 independently of the £7 charity levy billed to students in two of the three terms of the year. 

Conversely, University College JCR told C+ that they allocate approximately £300 per term to charities through standing orders. These funds are neither raised through specific levies or through the fundraising efforts of the students, but come from the budget itself. Univ JCR say that this typically amounts to between £700 and £900 going to charity over the year.