British News & Issues

Elite universities should adopt Ivy League-style scholarships worth thousands of pounds – with some funded by wealthy alumni – to prevent money becoming a barrier to going to university, Oxford University's new vice-chancellor has said.

Oxford University will campaign for an American-style university fundingsystem under which students from the poorest homes will qualify for large bursaries to ensure they are not put off doing a degree by higher fees, Andrew Hamilton said.

He described a "needs-blind" funding system and admitted that even the £10,550 bursary currently offered to Oxford undergraduates, one of the most generous in the UK, needed improvement. But his comments will fuel speculation that the top universities also want to charge American rates for degrees. Ivy league institutions can demand up to $50,000 (about £31,000) a year.

Hamilton, formerly provost of Yale, was named as Oxford's 296th vice-chancellor last June. He takes up his post today and will be installed as vice-chancellor in an official ceremony on Tuesday.

He insisted it was too early in his appointment to set out the university's position on fee charging, but argued that any move to raise the current £3,225 a year cap on fees would have to be matched with a big expansion of financial support for students.

In his first official interview, Hamilton said: "We must take great care not to fail the students [by] allowing a degradation of the quality of education that is provided by the great universities of Great Britain. But also not to fail them in the commitment that the great universities must make to any student who has the academic credentials, the academic potential to attend. The commitment that we must make to them [is] that they will attend Oxford irrespective of their economic circumstances."

He added: "Oxford has a very generous bursary offer, but obviously as this debate unfolds we've got to reinforce that and quite frankly improve it. Particularly as any discussion of a change in fee might or might not occur."

He warned that looming funding cuts would make the debate about whether to raise tuition fees more urgent. "Financial sustainability is, without any question, going to be one of the biggest challenges for us."

But his emphasis on improving bursaries before raising fees is a departure from many of his vice-chancellor colleagues who are lobbying for tuition charges to be raised under a government-commissioned review of student finance, due to be launched in the next few weeks.

At Oxford, bigger bursaries and scholarships will be funded from a drive to encourage alumni to fund the next generation of students, in an echo of the Ivy League of top universities in America.

Hamilton was recruited from Yale partly on his fundraising record. Born in England, he has spent 28 years in America, at Yale and Princeton universities.

Oxford graduates should expect to give money back, when they can afford it, to "ensure future students will have the same opportunities that they had when they were here", he said.

He said that universities would have to diversify their funding sources to become less dependent on the government as spending is cut. Options include improving alumni donations, higher fees and more collaboration with industry.