LONDON - The University of Oxford’s coffers have long been padded by the largesse of wealthy benefactors. Take 17th century Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon, sponsor of the Sheldonian Theatre used for graduation ceremonies. Private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman on Wednesday became the latest plutocrat to secure an eponymous edifice, gifting 150 million pounds for a new humanities centre. His generosity comes at a time of growing financial vulnerability for Oxford’s less prestigious peers.

It’s the latest in a string of recent educational gifts by the Blackstone Group founder. Schwarzman pledged $350 million to Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year for the Schwarzman College of Computing, and handed $150 million to Yale in 2015. Add a 2013 inner-city scholarship fund and 2007 gift to New York Public Library, and the total is about 5% of his $15.5 billion net worth, as estimated by Forbes. That’s excluding any contribution the 72-year-old made to a $575 million Sino-American scholarship scheme he founded in 2013.

Oxford, with an endowment of 4.9 billion pounds last year including college assets, is hardly the neediest recipient. The 900-year-old university's 2.2 billion pounds of income in the last financial year dwarfs the average UK institution’s 209 million pounds, using Higher Education Statistics Agency data and stripping out financial anomalies Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford’s income per student was 78% higher than the average of Imperial College, University College London and the London School of Economics. Its 160 million pounds of capital expenditure, refurbishing buildings and the like, was more than the total income of universities like Bournemouth and Aston.

The gulf between the haves and have-nots is likely to grow. Government reforms shifted the cost of education to students, making make them more discriminating about which courses they attend, and putting pressure on universities to stay competitive. Smaller ones can borrow to invest in student digs, facilities and teacher salaries, at the cost of greater financial risk. UK university debt has tripled over the past decade to 12 billion pounds, according to a 2018 report by IFR magazine. The newspaper reported in November 2018 that three unnamed universities are relying on “bridging loans” just to stay afloat. Schwarzman’s generosity makes the inequality gap more acute.

CONTEXT NEWS

- The University of Oxford on June 19 announced a 150 million pound donation by Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman, chief executive and co-founder of private equity firm Blackstone Group.

- The money will be used to build the Schwarzman Centre, which Oxford described as a “dynamic hub dedicated to the humanities”. It will house programmes in English, history, linguistics, medieval and modern languages, music, philosophy, theology and religion, with a new library “in a space designed to encourage experiential learning and bold experimentation through cross-disciplinary and collaborative study”.

- The centre will also be home to Oxford’s new institute for the study of ethics in artificial intelligence, and will include a 500-seat concert hall.

- Schwarzman in 2018 announced a $350 million gift to establish the Schwarzman College of Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2015 he donated $150 million to Yale University, and has also given $50 million to the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, which provides tuition assistance to underprivileged children attending Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New York.

(Editing by Neil Unmack and Bob Cervi)

© Reuters News 2019