Top dons create new Oxbridge

Parents Forum
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<p>From today's Sunday Times (UK). Thought CC'ers might be interested in this development across the Atlantic (though the reference to Amherst in Pennsylvania is mystifying - I think William and Mary is known through its joint program with St. Andrews but anything outside of H&Y is largely unknown here - with the odd exception like BYU). I'm copying the whole article as The Times is behind a paywall now.</p>

<p>Some of Britain’s best-known academics are to launch a private university to rival Oxford and Cambridge, charging students £18,000 a year for tuition.</p>

<p>The philosopher A C Grayling has secured multi-million-pound funding from private investors to create an institution modelled on America’s elite liberal arts colleges.</p>

<p>In addition to teaching by 14 “star” professors, the for-profit college will offer students weekly one-to-one tutorials, which Grayling argues are being reduced in their traditional Oxbridge strongholds because of cost-cutting.</p>

<p>New College of the Humanities, based in Bloomsbury, central London, will start taking applications from next month and will begin the first of its three-year undergraduate courses in autumn 2012.</p>

<p>It is the forerunner of what could be a new breed of American-style private colleges, exempt from the government’s £9,000 cap on fees and able to charge a premium price for high-quality teaching. Ministers are keen to encourage new institutions to compete with existing universities.</p>

<p>The 14 professors behind the project, all of whom will teach, include Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist; the historians Sir David Cannadine, Linda Colley and Niall Ferguson; Steven Pinker, the psychologist; Sir Christopher Ricks, former Oxford professor of poetry; and Steve Jones, the geneticist.</p>

<p>Grayling is leaving his professorship of philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, to become full-time master of the college, which will award University of London degrees. It will open at a time when almost every top university trebles undergraduate fees to the maximum permitted £9,000. Because New College is outside the state-funded system, it is not subject to the cap.</p>

<p>Those who have provided the college’s start-up funds of up to £10m include a multi-millionaire Swiss couple, several City financiers, Grayling and the professors themselves, almost all of whom have bought shares in it.</p>

<p>The institution, modelled partly on American colleges such as William & Mary in Virginia and Amherst in Pennsylvania, will initially teach English, history, philosophy, economics and law degrees.</p>

<p>Students taking the first three disciplines will have to “major” in one of them and take one of the other two as a “minor” subject.</p>

<p>The college aims eventually to admit 375 students a year. It will start by offering roughly 200 places to students with typically a minimum of three As at A-level. About a quarter will receive means-tested bursaries or scholarships, some for 100% of the fees. The academics are also in talks with the government and banks to provide low-interest student loans.</p>

<p>Grayling acknowledges that many observers will be surprised at a group of “almost all pinko” academics opening a college charging double the £9,000 of other top institutions — plus a further £10,000 or so in living costs.</p>

<p>However, they argue the fees are justified because of the “premium” teaching the college will offer. Its full-time staff will be paid 25% above the average at mainstream universities.</p>

<p>The group believes that pressure will intensify on universities to raise fees further to maintain teaching quality, while arts and humanities degree courses will be closed as government funding is slashed.</p>

<p>Clarissa Farr, the high mistress of St Paul’s girls’ school in London, who will serve on the college’s advisory board, described Grayling’s project as “a really powerful combination of scholarly tradition and entrepreneurial modernity”.</p>

<p>She added: “I think it will appeal to really discriminating students who want to pursue serious scholarship and recognise the value of one-to-one tuition. Students at our leading schools are used to being the first, trying something new and taking a risk.”</p>

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<p>“the for-profit college”</p>

<p>Only a matter of time until they announce their new basketball coach is John Calipari.</p>

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<p>Ds got a flier from them. We thought it was a joke.</p>

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<p>Actually what I thought most interesting was the tip of the hat to the US liberal arts curriculum as the founders of this new university attempt to combine what they see the best of the American system with the best of oxbridge (tutorials). An article in today’s Telegraph references the brain drain to the US: " It was absurd, (Grayling) argued, that so many of our young people are going off to America to do their degrees, and he is surely right. The shortage of places in top universities is now so acute that we have 10,000 UK school leavers a year who are spending $60,000 a year on Animal House-style frat parties on the Podunk Liberal Arts Campus or other American colleges. That cash could be going into the hard-pressed British system. " [At</a> last, an Oxbridge for those who can’t get into Oxbridge - Telegraph](<a href=“At last, an Oxbridge for those who can’t get into Oxbridge”>At last, an Oxbridge for those who can’t get into Oxbridge )</p>

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<p>Hillsdale College, Brighton Beach campus…</p>

<p>with apologies to true Hillsdale College graduates :-)</p>

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<p>I would love to see the business plan. I can’t imagine how for-profit elite college education is going to work, and in the middle of London no less. Taking into account the fair value of their physical plant, libraries, and equipment, places like Amherst and William & Mary have capital of millions of dollars per student, not about $16 million for the whole institution. There’s no way that is going to earn a market rate of return, even in this market, without serious, serious leveraging of capital and of top-line faculty. (And that sure looks like top-line faculty, if maybe a bit superannuated.)</p>