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SHOCK OF THE NEW: Even medieval readers can now plug in at the Bodleian Library
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To outsiders, few places in Europe seem as indifferent to millennial change as the University of Oxford. There are some obvious signs of modernity: the high street has sprouted an Internet café and a Starbucks, and the snarl of traffic through the city center can test the patience of the most phlegmatic don. But to step into the secluded quadrangles of Oxford's 39 colleges, or browse through the 15th-century tomes in the Bodleian Library, or sit in Oxford's gothic dining halls, is to surround yourself in the past. Fusty tradition remains as central to Oxford's identity as the "dreaming spires" that mark its skyline.
But lately life under those spires hasn't been so idyllic. Oxford is roiling, due to a convergence of forces and events that have raised questions about whether Europe's most prestigious university still reasonably deserves to be ranked among the world's best. Oxford regularly finishes behind its longtime rival, Cambridge, and London's Imperial College in annual newspaper rankings of Britain's top universities.
Last spring Oxford suffered through a public relations nightmare when Labour government ministers harangued Oxford's Magdalen College for rejecting a state-school applicant, Laura Spence, who subsequently accepted a place at Harvard. The political tempest, however unfairly, reinforced the public image of Oxford as a bastion of élitism, not academic merit. "Oxford is more exposed than any other university to the outside world," says Alan Ryan, the warden of Oxford's New College. "Anything Oxford does people turn into a costume drama." It had an unhappy ending. As a result of the Spence dustup, undergraduate applications to Oxford from state-school students dropped 2%.
That slide comes at an inopportune time for Oxford, which has struggled to cope with the financial pressures of running an élite research university in an era of dwindling public resources. Like all British universities, Oxford faces deep cuts in government funding, which would force it to consider charging students tuition for the first time in its history. The endowment of the university and its colleges is dwarfed by those of American competitors such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford — and amounts to only about half the assets possessed by Cambridge.
And the gap seems likely to widen. Far earlier than Oxford, Cambridge recognized the vital importance of cozying up to the technology industry. Cambridge inked a $135 million deal to create a new research institute with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earlier this year attracted a $200 million gift from Bill Gates to endow 225 international scholars at Cambridge. "[Oxford's] future is downhill," says Robert Stevens, the master of Pembroke, one of Oxford's poorest colleges. "The university is steadily becoming a less important international institution. It's just hidden because of the old buildings and the fact that some of the people inside them are rich."
Money lies at the heart of Oxford's problems. Like other major institutions, Oxford's ability to attract research funding — which finances other university operations — depends on its reserves of prominent professors and top graduate students. Oxford has long traded on its prestige to lure top scholars to teach within its walls and convince bright young students to remain in academia. But that's no longer good enough. "Academic salaries have gone through the floor," says Ryan. "And so now our competition comes from other professions that used to look unattractive."
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