Oxford's Outgoing and Newly Installed V-Cs Air Their Views. (October 7, 2009)

On October 1 New Zealand born John Hood retired from the vice-chancellorship of Oxford University handing the reins over to Andrew Hamilton who read chemistry at the University of Exeter and after studying for a master's degree at the University of British Columbia, received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1980.  He had been provost of Yale University from 2004 until he took up the vice-chancellorship of Oxford on October 1.

In his parting speech at Professor Hamilton's inauguration ceremony, Dr Hood noted that the university was budgeting to make a loss for the fourth year in a row, and according to Rachel Williams' article in the Guarding Dr Hood didn't mince words. For example he criticised "other elite universities for accepting more high fee-paying international undergraduates at the expense of home students to increase revenues".

In turn Professor Hamilton said Oxford faced tough times and needed defending against "political opportunism and crude social engineering" as debate on its role looked set to intensify.

Dr Hood told those present: "From a financial perspective these are genuinely worrying times. Government budgets are over-stressed and endowments are extremely volatile, as are the markets for our entrepreneurial activities."

He stressed that: "Unlike some of the leading Russell Group universities, Oxford has not – to date – succumbed to the temptation to fill out its teaching revenues by very substantially increasing its proportion of full-fee international undergraduates at the expense of home or EU student numbers; neither has it resorted to reducing its teaching costs by disproportionately placing responsibility for undergraduate teaching with graduate students and temporary college lecturers, although the pressure to do so is intense. Comprehensive, stable, sustainable public policy frameworks for teaching, infrastructure, and academic collections, rather than the incessant indecision at the margins we are currently witnessing, are essential. Without such frameworks, the risk to this university's global standing must be grave; the consequences of that for the UK are, I should think, plain."

Ms Williams sums up: "Many vice-chancellors are lobbying for tuition charges to be raised, but Hamilton, the former provost of Yale, has placed a greater emphasis on improving bursaries, saying leading universities should adopt Ivy League-style scholarships worth thousands of pounds, with some funded by wealthy alumni."