Oxford to Raise $2.5 Billion to Compete with U.S. Ivy Leagues
In an effort to keep up its better-funded Ivy League competition in the United States, the University of Oxford in London has embarked on the largest fundraising campaign in European academic history, reports The Christian Science Monitor (“Oxford Shakes Up British Higher Education with Fundraising Drive,” May 29, 2008).
Instead of raising tuition, which is currently capped at £3,000 (roughly $6,000) a year, and at the behest of the British government, which is urging British institutions to “become as useful as their U.S. counterparts,” Oxford announced a plan to raise a target $2.5 billion in endowments and alumni support. The school has already received commitments for an approximate $1.15 billion during the campaign’s pre-launch phase.
The money will go toward recruiting top academic talent from around the world, toward supporting Oxford’s unique one-on-one tutorial system, and toward keeping up with the school’s U.S. rivals.
“We want to stay world class; we want to be the best in the world,” said university chancellor Chris Patten, noting that Oxford lags well behind at least three Ivies — Harvard, Yale, and Princeton — in terms of funding. “We want to compete in the world economy for the best academics.”
The combined endowments of all British universities total less than half of Harvard’s $34 billion endowment, according to numbers from the Sutton Trust, an educational charity.
“The extent of endowments in the U.K. is minuscule in terms of what U.S. universities are receiving,” said Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education at the University of Buckingham.
Oxford and the University of Cambridge together account for 80 percent of the British endowment total, with the other more than 100 British universities barely reaching a collective $3.8 billion. Cambridge, for its part, launched a fundraising campaign of its own three years ago, raising over $1.3 billion.
“The U.S. is a long way ahead,” Cambridge spokesman Gregory Hayman told The Monitor, “but our view is that the reason there hasn’t been a culture of giving in the U.K. is that there hasn’t been a culture of asking.”