Why Give?

In the past fifteen years, government funding for students in tertiary education has fallen by over 40% in real terms. More specifically, ministers’ support for the Oxbridge collegiate system, and its unique supervision-based teaching, has been reduced by 22% over the last decade. For Cambridge and Trinity Hall this has been a real double-whammy.

Fees paid by undergraduates and their families cover only a small proportion of total tuition costs. The University estimates these to average about £13,500 per year across different subjects, of which fees and government support together contribute roughly £7,500. The remainder has to be found from University and College resources. In Trinity Hall’s case, I calculate that educating each undergraduate generates an annual deficit of between £4,500 and £5,000. In other words, the College has to find, say, £1.75 million from endowment income and donations just to fulfil its charter as a place of learning – that’s a crazy way to run a business! In addition, the College and the University run a further deficit on our overall graduate populations.

A favourite theme of mine currently relates to a common misconception that Cambridge, and, by association, Trinity Hall is rich. If this were ever true in the freewheeling full-grant days of the 1960s and 70s (and it wasn’t), it is completely misguided now. Our endowment totals approximately £67 million. It is all professionally managed, run on a total return basis, and over several years has exhibited above industry-average returns. However, it is under considerable strain. To the traditional costs of providing for the Fellowship and building maintenance, must, now that government is abrogating its responsibilities, be added: subsidies for student tuition, catering and accommodation, academic and social bursaries, the construction of new buildings and facilities, an increasing number of Fellows’ stipends, aspects of Fellows’ pay generally, JCR, MCR, sporting subsidies, and a great deal of unrecompensed hospitality.

Cambridge, as a whole, including the University and all the colleges, has an endowment approaching £3 billion – Oxford a little less. This compares with £8.5 billion for Yale and over £14 billion at Harvard. Backing every student, Cambridge has £150,000 of endowment capital, that number is £600,000 at each of Yale and Harvard and over £1 million at Princeton! It is easy to see where the genuine competition lies and how real the threat is to our still enviable position as a world-class academic institution.

The support we are now asking our alumni and all our friends and supporters for is to put the College beyond harm and to guarantee that vital independence that successive governments have sought to drain away. Battle will soon be joined over the future of Higher Education funding; we must win, and the independence we seek over the next few years will prove priceless.

Paul ffolkes Davis
Bursar

June 2006