David Lammy rightly asks why Oxford and Cambridge don’t put their “vast wealth … to better use” by “funding sophisticated access and outreach programmes” (Revealed: the £21bn wealth built up by Oxford and Cambridge, 29 May). He will, I hope, be flattered to learn that his critique of Oxbridge is almost identical to that made by RH Tawney over a century ago. Writing in 1906, Tawney argued that the ancient universities were wasting their wealth (typically originally donated for the education of the poor) on scholarships for the wealthy. They should, he said, spread their “roots into the subsoil of society”: a system that “locks up the culture of our older Universities within the four walls of expensive Colleges is … a very mischievous anachronism”. His critique led to Oxford producing the report Oxford and Working-Class Education (1908), which pointed out that colleges – not just the central university – had a duty to support outreach work. Oxford and Cambridge then developed programmes for working-class adults across the industrial cities of England. Tawney himself taught several, famously in Stoke and Rochdale.
Mr Lammy is not only a prominent advocate of equality in higher education; he is also a steadfast supporter of adult education. Could I suggest these enthusiasms should be brought together? Over time, Oxford and Cambridge gradually transferred their outreach programmes for adults to the civic and “Robbins” universities: this made sense as part of a national system of higher education. But from the 1980s governments – of all political persuasions – told universities such “roots into the subsoil of society” would not be funded. And as few universities thought working-class adults a worthy cause for their own resources, the work withered on the vine.
The problem with England’s elite universities– Oxford and Cambridge above all, but by no means them alone – is not that they are seriously wealthy, but that they have torn up their “roots into the subsoil”, and see no need to regrow them. They should do so. This means appointing and supporting staff who will work, on a long-term basis, with communities and organisations of the deprived and the dispossessed: listening to ordinary people, supporting them, providing broad educational opportunities where people live and work, supporting communities’ development, ensuring universities are open to the views of the full range of citizens. Providing a ladder for a few clever boys and girls to climb out of poverty and deprivation does not make for a just society or an educated democracy. Universities must serve all the people.
John Holford
Robert Peers professor of adult education, University of Nottingham
• Much has been made in your article about the size of the assets under management at the University of Cambridge and its colleges.
Many of the “assets” valued are fixed in the buildings where we teach, house our students, do the ground-breaking research that has earned us more than 90 Nobel prizes and has brought, and continues to bring, change to the world. The invested assets of our endowment fund allow the university to pay for research, to provide bursaries for students, and to continue to strive for wider access. Our generation must ensure that the university will survive and thrive for another 800 years as a global leader in research and education.
Our other assets include invaluable treasures such as Samuel Pepys’ library and Sir Isaac Newton’s personal notebooks. They are conserved and held in trust for everyone, and made available for research.
Nelson Mandela said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” The fact that University of Cambridge and its colleges have carefully stewarded our resources and private donations for hundreds of years to finance our mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence should be considered a cause for celebration rather than criticism.
Professor Stephen Toope
Vice-chancellor, University of Cambridge
• Oxbridge seems to do two things very well: (1) it produces very high quality research and scholarship; (2) it provides for some of its alumni a gravy train which runs straight to this country’s establishment. Current critics of Oxbridge, including the Guardian and David Lammy MP, take the former for granted and obsess about who gets on the gravy train. Apparently, if the passengers were a bit more representative of the population at large, all would be well. To the misguided who think that our Oxbridge-fuelled establishment is doing a fine job for this country, that might seem reasonable. But who could really believe that? As parliament is increasingly filled by Oxbridge-educated MPs, the quality of political leadership declines. Our Oxbridge CEOs and directors pay themselves obscene salaries and bonuses while their businesses and employees struggle. And the rate at which the British economy slides below the waves accelerates. The gravy train, of course, is occupied by Oxbridge undergraduates.
Meanwhile, Oxbridge postgraduates, postdocs, lecturers and professors continue to generate outstanding research and scholarship. Surely the key issue is not “who should be on the gravy train?” but “how do we stop it running?”. The obvious answer is to turn Cambridge and Oxford Universities into postgraduate, research institutions. That would permit Oxbridge to devote all its considerable resources to what it is best at and what is socially and politically responsible while substantially disrupting Britain’s incompetent establishment.
Colin Fraser
Cambridge
• It is understandable that the Guardian has focused on the levels of wealth of Oxbridge and its colleges. But the enormous wealth accrued by institutions that educate only a small fraction of students should not be allowed to distract from the much more serious resourcing disparities across the system as a whole.
Leaving aside Oxbridge, in 2015-16 the multi-faculty institution with the highest income from all sources (Imperial College) had four-and-a-half times the median income per full-time equivalent university student (£13,360). The university with the lowest income (Bucks New) had only 70% of the median. The wealth disparities were even greater: the 24 members of the Russell Group own nearly 60% of the net assets (all assets net of pension liabilities) of the 161 institutions covered by the official statistics. These disparities can be expected to widen further if some of the more prestigious institutions continue to be the beneficiaries of the lifting of the cap on recruitment while many of the institutions that cater for a wider social range struggle to recruit.
It is very difficult to see on what grounds such differentials can be justified.
Roger Brown
Emeritus professor of higher education policy and former vice-chancellor, Southampton Solent University
