Autumn 2013.Pdf

the Queen’s College newsletter issue twenty-three Michaelmas Term 2013 12/13 Contents: Page 2 A letter from the Provost Page 3 Snapshot of a staircase Pages 4-5 News from the College Pages 6-7 Your old photographs Pages 8-9 Through Hubble’s telescope Page 10 Budd’s Blog Page 11 Interview Page 12 A letter from the Old Members’ Officer Contributors: Alan Budd, Michael Riordan, Ghassan Yassin Editors: The Old Members’ Office Cover photograph by Linda Irving-Bell Welcome Professor Paul Madden FRS FRSE Photograph: © Veronika Vernier Photograph: © Veronika £16K, or what? The Vice-Chancellor caused something of a stir recently when he said that the cap on University fees, currently £9,000 for undergraduate home/EU students, should be raised so that universities could set a fee which enabled them to recoup the cost of providing the education. He alluded to a figure of £16,000 for the latter in Oxford and pointed out that this meant an annual gap between cost and fee income of £70 million, which, he suggested, was causing a shortfall for the University in its provisions Staircase 2, 1913-15 for capital expenditure on replacement buildings, IT this figure as realistic (we might note that Cambridge infrastructure, and so on. He pointed out that the vast has calculated a similar number), it still remains to be majority of universities have set their fees at the level of the asked whether this cost should be met directly from current cap, irrespective of the actual educational provision fee income. Within this University (or more accurately, on offer and its cost, and he argued that removing the cap within its colleges) there are other sources of income would allow institutions to develop distinctive educational which are correctly applied to the costs of education – offerings and to be financed at an appropriate level for notably the income from endowments (the colleges’ share doing so. Keeping Oxford at the very top of the international of which totals some £3 billion) and donations made to university rankings was a key consideration. The V-C, who cover such costs. A quick estimate suggests that the was formerly Provost at Yale, has first-hand knowledge totality of this is quite close to filling the V-C’s annual of the situation at those competitor universities in the US, income gap of £70 million, so to assign the shortage of where fees can be as high as $50,000 but where there are finance for investment to the imbalance of tuition fee and generous scholarships and bursaries so that family wealth tuition cost seems over-simplistic. However, the situation is (in theory) not a barrier to entry. He anticipated that is complicated by the fact that a great deal of the ‘extra’ any significant increase in the fee here would necessitate income provided by endowments is applied indirectly to the the development of the resources to fund comparable support of education (for example, buildings maintenance, schemes. considerable accommodation and catering subsidies to Not surprisingly, the statement caused outrage in the students, and so on); the direct support of students (about student body and elsewhere in the University (and outside), £250,000 per annum at Queen’s at present) in the form of where the shockwaves from the introduction of the £9,000 bursaries and scholarships is small in comparison with the fee are still being felt. The first students to be admitted Ivy League model. after the fee increased are now just entering their second All of this suggests that quite a profound choice is facing year and, as I mentioned in a previous Newsletter, we are the British universities that wish to compete at the highest still watching for any consequences of the change. Of international level. The current funding model allows modest course, nobody has yet been required to pay the fee; it has fees, modest levels of student support, and is partly funded been paid on behalf of the student via a loan which will be by modest (but generous and increasing) philanthropy. The recouped after graduation through an increased level of alternative may be a model which involves high fees, high income tax after earnings exceed a certain threshold. The levels of student support, and higher levels of alumni giving. actual (as opposed to anticipated) pain has not yet been The hope would be that as the institutions became generally felt by the students, therefore, and the government has richer, they would be able to provide much more generously parked the cost in its loan book – without yet having had to for students and also find or release the funding to deal with confront the practical reality of the extent to which this will the legacy of capital underinvestment. This sounds plausible actually be paid off. in the abstract, but evidence as to its effectiveness in the I should say at the outset that the University has no plans to promotion of social mobility in the US is mixed (to say the raise fees; I have been on its Council for the last three and least), and under such a system we would need to see an a half years and nothing of this nature has been discussed enormous increase in the levels of giving in order to enable there. Nevertheless, the matter is worth examination if only the majority of our current UK undergraduates to study so that we might gain a better understanding of where here. (Oxford’s total endowments, for example, in 2012 we stand with respect to those international comparators were less than £4 billion; compare Harvard’s $30 billion.) So, and how we might respond to any further changes in the could it happen here? Perhaps, but there would need to be landscape for funding. a fundamental shift in attitude, and my reason for writing in such detail here will I hope now be obvious: the shift would The examination is not straightforward. The internal finances need to enthuse and win the confidence of Old Members. of the University as a whole are surprisingly complex, so Does it? the £16,000 figure is the result of a number of assumptions about how costs should be allocated. Even if one accepts 2 the Queen’s College newsletter the latter, but in 1938 the then Provost, Canon Streeter (far left, back row), was killed in an aeroplane crash, and Hodgkin was persuaded to serve as Provost (the first in the College’s history not to be in Holy Orders) for a few years until Oliver Franks (who had been groomed to succeed Streeter) was ready. Unfortunately war broke out shortly afterwards and Franks was needed in Whitehall, leaving Hodgkin to hold the fort for him for eight years, during which he saw it as his duty to keep in touch with Queensmen serving in the military across the world, as well as writing his history of the College. A. S. Hunt (1871-1934, far right of back row) came up to Queen’s in Staircase 2, 1913-15 1890 and despite a 1st in Classical Moderations, he was disappointed with a 2nd in Literae Humaniores in 1893. Nevertheless, he was The recently discovered elected to a Demyship at Magdalen notice-board of rooms and then a Research Fellowship at Lincoln, before returning as a on Staircase 2 (pictured), Research Fellow to Queen’s in which can be dated to 1906. By this time Hunt, together sometime in 1913-15 (the with B. P. Grenfell (also a Fellow of Queen’s), had already excavated the period between Hunt’s rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus and appointment as Professor discovered the mass of Egyptian and Wilson going down), papyri which established papyrology shows that it was then as an academic discipline. Among their discoveries were partial copies inhabited by some of unknown works by Euripides, illustrious men. Menander, Pindar, Sappho, and Sophocles, as well as parts of the Bible and non-canonical gospels. A. H. Sayce (1845-1933, 3rd Grenfell (who died in 1924) and from the right in the middle row) Hunt were to spend the rest of their was one of the foremost scholars lives studying them and they were of the ancient Near East. By the succeeded by Edgar Lobel, also time he left school (despite bouts a Research Fellow at Queen’s. A of tuberculosis and typhoid fever) century later, there is still much more he could already read Arabic, work to be done in deciphering and Assyrian, Persian, and Sanskrit, studying these papyri. He succeeded as well as Cuneiform and Hieroglyphs. He entered Queen’s Grenfell as Professor of Papyrology in in 1865 with a scholarship. In 1868, despite a serious 1913, and retained it until his death in attack of pneumonia (during which he learned Basque), he 1934. gained a 1st in Literae Humaniores and the following year was elected a Fellow of the College. He spent much of his Percy Wilson (1893-1977) entered the College on life abroad, mostly in North Africa and the Near East. He 11 October 1911 from Halifax. He took a 1st in both worked and published on Egypt, Israel, the Hittites and the Mathematics Moderations (1913) and Mathematics finals Babylonians, but he was best known for his work on the (1915). On entering the College he had told the Pro- Assyrians. He was an expert philologist and published many Provost, Edward Armstrong (3rd from left in middle row, translations of early texts. He remained a Fellow of Queen’s next to Magrath in the centre who remained Provost until his death in 1933.

Load more