Oxford and Cambridge sitting on £21bn wealth
Elite universities are revealed to own more land than the Church
OXBRIDGE colleges are sitting on an immense fortune of £21billion, including a Scottish castle, the O2 arena, the Top Gear test track and Millwall FC’s training ground, it emerged yesterday.
An audit of Oxford and Cambridge’s accounts revealed that they own property all over the UK worth £3.5billion.
The rest of their vast wealth consists of a portfolio of investments, estates, endowments and artefacts.
The land and buildings owned by the colleges cover 126,000 acres – an area more than four times the size of Manchester.
Their holdings exceed the 104,000 hectares owned by the Church of England, which was thought to be Britain’s largest private landowner, and their wealth amounts to more than the combined investments of the other 22 members of the Russell Group of elite universities.
The data, published by The Guardian newspaper, comes from freedom of information requests, archival research, annual accounts and Land Registry records.
Critics said yesterday that some of the wealth should be used to extend outreach projects for disadvantaged students.
Labour MP David Lammy said: ‘There can be no more excuses or passing the buck. With such a vast amount of wealth at their disposal I fail to see how it is tenable for Oxbridge colleges to continue to pay lip service to access and dedicate such a tiny proportion to improving access.’
Trinity College, Cambridge, is the wealthiest of the colleges, with published assets worth £1.3billion in its latest accounts.
St John’s College tops the table at Oxford, with nearly £600million in assets.
The oldest property owned by any college is Buittle Castle in Dumfries and Galloway, built in the 12th century and given to the Scottish nobleman John de Balliol, who, with his wife, Lady Dervorguilla, founded Balliol College, Oxford, in 1263.
Meanwhile, Trinity owns the 999year lease for the O2, originally called the Millennium Dome, and has made a profit of £22million from events there over two years.
Other holdings include the site of the Top Gear test track, also owned by Trinity, and the Rose Bowl, the home of Hampshire cricket club, which is owned by Queen’s College, Oxford.
Meanwhile, St John’s, Oxford, is the landlord of Millwall’s training ground.
There is also an Isle of Wight farm bought by The Queen’s College, Oxford, from Henry VIII, industrial estates in Leeds, gastropubs, and the freehold to more than 100 retail outlets and shops.
In Brent, All Souls College, Oxford, owns more than 300 properties, including many residential houses and the freehold to a Ladbrokes betting shop. Trinity also has a £563million investment fund, which recently included shares in the world’s largest arms firms, several partners in the Dakota Access pipeline, and Arconic, the supplier of the notorious cladding on Grenfell Tower.
The true extent of Oxbridge’s wealth is likely to be higher because many colleges do not place a value on assets such as art. Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has drawings by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, and paintings by Picasso, Constable, Titian and Turner. Cambridge owns Sir Isaac Newton’s notebooks and Samuel Pepys’ library.
The universities insist much of the wealth is tied up in real estate and could not be used without selling science labs, lecture theatres and libraries. Some funds are reserved for specific roles, such as paying for fellowships or student support, with conditions set by donors centuries beforehand.
A spokesman for Oxford said: ‘It is simply not the case that we have large unused funds immediately available for general spending.’
Cambridge vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Toope said: ‘The invested assets of our endowment fund allow the university to pay for research, provide bursaries and strive for wider access.’
‘There can be no more excuses’