Education suffers financial deficit

Oxford suffers financial deficit


Oxford University has said its colleges suffer financial deficit because of the costs of research, teaching and looking after their historic buildings.
Overall, the 36 self-governing colleges that make up the ancient university break even, but they have to rely on donations and conference fees.

The cost of running the colleges during 2004/2005 was £195m, according to accounts released by the university.

However, they only made £104m - mainly from fees and lodging charges.

The account figures show the colleges rely on money donated by former students and income from conferences, endowments and grants to make up the £91m shortfall.

The deficit lies in what the university describes as the colleges' "core" activities: teaching and research, providing food and accommodation to students, and maintaining buildings that are often hundreds of years old.

Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the conference of colleges, said: "The colleges managed their finances well in 2004-05, though the financial challenges we face are still significant."

Source: BBC on line 26 April

About Oxford

‘Beautiful city! So venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene’ (Dougill, 1998, pp. 146 and 151).

The physical manifestation of Rhodes’s attachment to Oxford is all around us ……………………thinking of Oxford, is a reminder of the power places have to call forth an emotional response in us, a power which is especially potent when skillfully and artfully linked to the ideology of nationalism.

A passage of Matthew Arnold’s eulogy to Oxford