Cash Low, Clout High : Times Hard at Oxford, Cambridge

Morale is low at Britain’s two ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge.

Twice since 1981, the government has cut their financial support by 11%, stunting academic salaries, stifling research and shrinking faculty levels.

An exodus of British university talent to the United States is already viewed as more damaging than the “brain drain” of the 1960s, this time luring so much bright young talent that an unsettled American computer scientist recruiting at Cambridge recently worried openly about taking what he called the seed corn of British science.

But despite the array of problems at the two schools, there is little panic among administrators. After all, they note, the English-speaking world’s two oldest universities have survived greater problems over the centuries.

Taking Long View

“When you’re sitting in a building that’s half a millennium old, you tend to take the long view,” Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew said.

Added Geoffrey Skelsey, an aide to the Cambridge vice chancellor, Lord Adrian, “We’ve had hiccups at various stages--the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution and the nuclear age--but the one constant has been adaptability.”

To adjust to the present crisis, both universities have decided for the first time to launch large-scale fund-raising programs similar to the ones that American colleges, large and small, have long since honed to a fine art.

“The university always relied on friends in high places to manipulate things its way,” noted Henry Drucker, Oxford’s first full-time fund raiser in 900 years. “Those days are over.”

University as Umbrella

Despite the extent of change and growing financial pressures, both universities have maintained their system of small, highly autonomous colleges grouped under the umbrella of the university as a whole.

The relationship, akin to the U.S. federal-state government system, leaves the colleges free to pick their own faculty and students, provided that they meet standards set by the university, and to educate the students along the guidelines of syllabuses set by the larger body.

The key element of that education is the tutorial system, a prized relic of the Middle Ages that throws lowly undergraduates together with great minds in their field, often one-on-one, in weekly seminar-like discussions.

“It’s different, it’s extravagant, but it makes being an undergraduate here different than anywhere else in the world,” Drucker said.

In Britain, where the two schools are fused together in the public mind into a concept known as “Oxbridge” and upper middle class society seems to be divided between those who went there and those who did not, the impact of Oxford and Cambridge remains unmatched.

Although 43 other universities now dot the British landscape, it is at Oxford and Cambridge where those destined to run the country soak in fundamental English values. Within the timeless courtyards of Oxbridge colleges, the peculiar mix of insularity, aloofness, civility and supreme confidence that make up so much of the English character are at their strongest.

“The twin universities embody the essence of Englishness,” noted novelist Frederic Raphael.

The influence of Oxbridge on modern Britain is hard to overestimate.

Although in any year they graduate less than 7% of undergraduates in Britain, Oxford and Cambridge account for 234 of the 650 members of the current House of Commons, 14 of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 22-member Cabinet, including Thatcher herself, and nearly half the 1,080 members of the House of Lords. Indeed, in this century, Britain has had only four prime ministers who were not Oxford graduates.

Only France’s National School of Administration in Paris, established after World War II by President Charles de Gaulle, has a greater monopoly of graduates in a national polity.

Dominant in Media

In Britain, senior jobs in the civil service, in radio, television and the press are similarly dominated by Oxbridge.

“One reason Britain has never needed a constitution is that everyone who mattered went to school together,” Drucker said.

The latest enrollment figures show 11,600 enrolled at Cambridge and 12,800 at Oxford.

Last month, the election for the largely ceremonial chancellorship at Oxford received the type of saturation coverage that the national media usually reserve for parliamentary elections. One paper, the Sunday Telegraph, published the vote tabulation on its front page in Latin.

The winner, succeeding the late Harold Macmillan, Conservative former prime minister and Oxford graduate, was Roy Jenkins, former Labor Cabinet minister and Oxford graduate.

Excellence as Yardstick

Over the centuries, both Oxford and Cambridge have replaced privilege with excellence as the main yardstick for entrance, accepting more students today from state secondary schools than the country’s class-dominated private boarding schools. Oxford alumni Thatcher and former Prime Minister Edward Heath are products of this trend.

Still, the two universities accept change slowly. Efforts to draw on a greater cross-section of British society first began in the last century when first non-Anglicans, and then women, were admitted. Even then, they were not immediately made eligible for degrees.

In 1920, knowledge of Greek was dropped as an entrance requirement, opening the door to graduates of secondary schools that did not teach the subject.

It was 1877 before Oxford abolished compulsory celibacy for its academic staff.

World War II was over before Cambridge conferred its first degree on a woman.

Oxford’s English literature syllabus did not acknowledge the contributions of those who wrote after 1900--T.S. Eliot, for instance--until 1970.

Most colleges at the two universities did not turn coeducational until the 1970s.

‘Old Boy’ Network

Despite a broader intake of students, the very concentration of excellence at Oxbridge spawns its own “old boy” network and with it, a passport to opportunity.

“Oxford and Cambridge are working, operating clubs,” summed up Peter Scott, editor of a British weekly journal on higher education, the Times Higher Education Supplement. “You meet people who will be succeeding in the future, and that’s an advantage.”

Social commentator Antony Sampson once referred to Oxford’s wealthy Balliol College as more of a cult than a college and to some extent the description applies to Oxbridge as a whole.

The stuffy upper-crust accent once associated with Oxbridge has softened noticeably in recent years, but terminology persists that implies distance from a lesser world outside.

For example, students do not merely arrive at or leave Oxford or Cambridge. They “come up” or “go down”--or are “sent down” when expelled--as if the academies were on some Olympian heights.

Although there is no known date of foundation, Oxford traces its origins to the late 11th Century, when teaching--probably of theology--first began in the town.

The arrival of Dominican and Franciscan monks in the 13th Century and the closure of the University of Paris to English students in 1167 both strengthened the new school at Oxford.

75 Miles Northeast

In 1209, a group of disenchanted Oxford students migrated 75 miles northeast to Cambridge where they established a new center for learning--and the oldest college rivalry in the English-speaking world.

Over the centuries, Oxford’s image as the more worldly place, emphasizing the arts and humanities, has been complemented by Cambridge’s more remote, scientific inclinations. The contributions of both universities are dazzling.

At Cambridge, Isaac Newton set down the basic laws of motion, developed the theory of gravitation and gave the first lectures on the composition of light. Charles Darwin was educated there and Ernest Rutherford laid the foundations of nuclear physics.

In this century, Cambridge’s 62 Nobel prizes rank among the highest number for any institution.

From Oxford have come poets, prime ministers and philosophers such as John Locke, whose liberal ideas helped to ignite the 17th-Century Enlightenment and inspire the American Constitution.

An assessment of the quality of Britain’s universities conducted last year by the Universities Grants Committee, which apportions government aid to the universities, confirmed the dominance of Oxford and Cambridge in virtually every discipline. Many academics believe that the gap between Oxbridge and Britain’s other universities has widened in recent years.

In addition, staff and students from Oxford and Cambridge have “colonized” the faculties at newer universities, a development that has only added to the Oxbridge influence and mystique .

While marshaling material to argue the necessity of filling a recently vacated position in teaching modern Italian, Drucker said he discovered that no less than one quarter of those teaching the language at college level in Britain were educated at Oxford.

Depths of Cash Crunch

The need to argue in favor of filling such a vacancy reflects the depths of the present cash crunch facing all British universities.

In addition to reducing its aid to higher education, the Thatcher government has also halted direct support to individual Oxbridge colleges, a development that has hit them especially hard.

As a result, Oxford alone has been forced to cut 200 of its 1,200 university academic posts, while individual colleges also are considering cuts to their staffs. At Cambridge, the picture is similar.

Inevitably, some of the brightest academic stars have begun moving to the United States, where salaries and research facilities offer better opportunities.

“The depressing academic salaries haven’t caused the exodus,” maintained Antony Kenny, master of Oxford’s Balliol College. “People don’t come here to get rich. But if there isn’t the money to provide the tools of the trade, then the trouble comes.”

To help reverse this trend and launch a program of expansion, Oxford early this year created the new fund-raising job that Drucker now holds.

Cambridge has advertised a similar position and hopes to launch its own program before the end of the year.

Although Drucker admits there is little know-how at Oxford about professional fund-raising, there is a sense of confidence that, somehow, the university will yet again survive adversity.

“If you can’t sell Oxford,” he said, “you can’t sell anything.”