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Get Four
|  | FEBRUARY 4, 2005
By Beth Carney Britain's Universities Go Begging Cash-strapped colleges are following the U.S. example and turning to alumni for help, so far with no great success Nearly two years ago, graduates of Oxford University's 488-year-old Corpus Christi College had their first taste of a distinctly American collegiate tradition: the fund-raising phone-a-thon. Students paid to dial up the college's alumni during spring break raised $280,000 to support graduate student grants. This spring, thanks to a donor who has offered matching funds, the college is poised to double that amount. "These things are starting to happen," says Peter Lampl, chairman of the educational Sutton Trust charity, who is donating the $188,000 to help Corpus Christi, his alma mater. Indeed, British graduates can expect more of such calls, as universities facing a cash crunch make fund-raising a priority. Like other European countries where education has traditionally been publicly funded, Britain lags far behind the U.S. when it comes to private fund-raising. But changing long-standing perceptions, and the very nature of philanthropy in Britain, won't be easy. NO GIFT FOR GIVING. Still, government officials and university administrators are trying. The government recently announced that it is making available the equivalent of $14 million in matching funds for a pilot program, starting in April, to help a select group of universities launch professional development offices. "I think, obviously, they've looked across the water [to the U.S.] and seen how successful this can be in some universities," said Eric Thomas, vice-chancellor of the University of Bristol and chairman of a government task force that reported last year on voluntary giving. Britain's universities have a long way to go before they match the fund-raising muscle of their American counterparts. Figures are only now beginning to be collected for annual giving, but one sign of financial support is in endowments. Only Oxford and Cambridge have significant endowments, thanks to their long histories and efforts in the past 15 years to step up fund-raising. Oxford's endowment of about $3.9 billion and Cambridge's of $4.5 billion are still small, however, when compared with American universities such as Yale, with $12.7 billion and Princeton's $9.9 billion, not to mention Harvard, with its peerless $22 billion, according to the National Association of College & University Business Officers. Even more striking is the lack of depth in British university endowments. According to a 2003 study commissioned by the Sutton Trust, the combined endowments of the top two British universities -- often referred to as "Oxbridge" -- were more than twice the value of the combined endowments of every other university in the country. Moreover, far fewer British alumni dig into their pockets. In Britain, Cambridge is a standout, with 9% of its alumni having dominated in 2004. In contrast, Princeton, high-performing by American standards, boasts that 59% of its alumni gave. FOREIGNERS, WELCOME. At leading schools, attitudes have been gradually changing over the past 10 years, as select universities began following Oxford and Cambridge's lead by starting professional development offices. Now, about 20 British universities have full-fledged development offices, although half still have no staff at all devoted to cultivating alumni, according to the nonprofit Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). But years of rising enrollments and lean budgets are putting increasing pressure on all universities to look for outside funds. A momentous change comes next year, when many universities will start charging fees of up to $5,650, an increase from the current across-the-board tuition of about $2,260. Other income-boosting tactics include recruiting overseas students, who pay higher fees than Europeans. Oxford University, for example, announced last week that financial reasons would lead it to increase non-European undergraduate enrollment from 7% to 12%. "There's been a real focusing of minds in the past year," says Joanna Motion, CASE's vice-president of international operations, who says the impending imposition of variable fees has forced schools to think competitively.
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