Miscellanea Cantabrigiana
Reasons to be cheerful
Cambridge’s fundraising success, combined with Alison Richard’s new honour, points to a bright future
If the old cliché of the ‘Cambridge bubble’ ever rings true, it is now. Cambridge is at its most insular in May Week: the arcane world of balls and garden parties is closed to outsiders, except the marauding tabloids, who lay bare elitist Oxbridge decadence to a prurient public. Nonetheless, even at this exceptional time we see evidence of Cambridge interacting with the outside world in less voyeuristic ways.
This week has seen two fruitful examples of Cambridge coming into contact with society at large. First the University announced that it had raised £1 billion in its 800th Anniversary campaign; then the outgoing Vice-Chancellor Alison Richard was made a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. These two events are, one assumes, unrelated; but in combination, they may tell us something about the complex relationship between the University, the government and society.
The main message of Cambridge’s fundraising drive is surely that the University is trying hard to reduce its dependency on government funding, which currently provides around half of Cambridge’s annual income. The University is not only looking to private benefactions, of course; it has also striven to expand the operations of Cambridge Assessment, which administers various external exams, and the University Press. This move towards financial independence is only to be welcomed, for public funding looks set to be cut even despite the influence of Cabinet Cantabrigians such as Messrs Clegg and Clarke; besides, some future government may be less keen to subsidise champagne-sodden finalists and obscure philosophy research. The more Cambridge can claim back from the alumni who have benefited from her embrace, the better.
Yet Professor Richard’s honour suggests that this is not merely a case of cleaving the bond which has always existed between government and the top universities. On the contrary, it shows that Cambridge’s contribution to British society can be recognised by more methods than filthy lucre alone. The honours received by the Vice-Chancellor and other Cambridge academics prove that learning – even the much-derided ‘education for education’s sake’ – remains at the heart of public life. (After all, is not every Oxbridge professor listed in Who’s Who?)
The lesson from recent events, then, is that a weakening of the financial bond between the universities and the government need not lessen their mutual influence in other ways. Freed from the shackles of target-driven research, Cambridge and others can be candid friends to the state, influencing public thought in their own way. Hopefully this contribution will be appropriately recognised, as it was in the honours list; if not, Cambridge’s new-found financial independence means it will hardly matter.
