Lord Patten, Chancellor of Oxford University -- Universities are Being Pressured to Lower Entry Requirements. (May 30, 2008)

Chris Patten, last British governor of Hong Kong and the University of Oxford's chancellor since 2003 told an audience of Oxford alumni at an event in London to launch a fundraising drive at the university: "It does nobody any good to think that you can deal with the problems of secondary education by lowering standards in our universities. Of course universities have to be as open to talent as possible but there continue to be real challenges in secondary education."

He went on to say that British governments had been "tight-fisted" about higher education: "By and large universities have had less independence and haven't been funded as well as they would have liked. It's not an ideal position for universities anywhere. Therefore it encourages my strong belief, whether one is talking about a Labour government or a Conservative government, that universities as great bastions of civil society need to be able to demonstrate more clearly that they can, without eschewing support from the state, stand on their own feet rather more effectively."

The Guardian reports that "Oxford is launching a £1.25bn (A$2.6bn) fundraising drive to boost its student support, facilities and academic recruitment in a bid to rival the US Ivy League universities such as Harvard and Yale. A similar drive by Cambridge University launched in 2005 was seen widely as a bid to get greater independence from the government."

Meanwhile the university is considering whether to campaign "for the government to lift the £3,300 cap on fees to bring in more money to the university, which subsidises around £7,000 of the cost of teaching each student. Patten added that if [Gordon] Brown or his successor increased the cap they would 'throw our hats in the air'".