Page 3 - Keble Review 2014

From the Warden
Last year I wrote about how we
try to attract the widest range of students to the College, especially
those whose circumstances mean that the Oxbridge experience is unfamiliar or even intimidating. In this article I want to say something about what we do to support them when they’ve been selected and, in particular, the bursary provision that we provide.
First, a word about our students as a whole.
One of the great privileges of being Warden of Keble is the opportunity it provides to interact with very intelligent and engaging young people in a whole variety of situations. Their commitment to study and to make the most of the Oxford experience is very strong.
Many readers of this piece will no doubt recall their own brief conversations with one of my predecessors in the context of what we still call Warden’s Collections. They involve, as they
no doubt always did, praise, gentle encouragement or occasionally something rather more directive in relation to the academic outcomes being, or not being, achieved. I
have a termly programme of such meetings which means that I see most undergraduates once a year and I also meet most of our graduate students in a similar format to discuss their progress.
There are also many other less formal contexts in which I meet the student community, from freshers’ drinks parties, barbecues, discussion lunches, and graduate seminars, to encounters in the rich variety of the College’s social life, for example, the Keble Big Band performing in the bar, drama productions like this year’s Keble
led Chicago in the O’Reilly theatre, College teams performing on the sports field or the river, or in the life
of the Chapel. And then there are the casual conversations, perhaps in one of the quads, in which I discover that
a particular individual is enthusing about the recent visit of some of our Old Members who’ve been describing their experiences as entrepreneurs, or is excited about a slot he’s just been given as a member of a comedy review at the Edinburgh Fringe, or relishing the prospect of a forthcoming trip
to Northern Ireland to undertake the Mourne Challenge in order to raise money for charity, or that another is very concerned about the impact of this past winter’s floods on the family home.
The enthusiasm and commitment
of some of our students has to be
seen against a background, for many, of a substantial, personal financial commitment to undertake their chosen course. With fees of £9,000 per year for undergraduate courses, in addition to living costs which are probably at
a minimum of £11,000 per year, I do not need to emphasise how much the framework of student funding has changed in recent years. In the long term it would be desirable for us to
be able to offer what is sometimes described as full needs funding.
For the immediate future, however, our ambition is more limited, but nonetheless important. Some 109 of Keble’s undergraduates are in receipt of Oxford Bursaries which we co-fund with the University. These are directed at students whose parental income
is less than about £42,000 per year and are provided in varying amounts according to the level of parental income, enabling them to reduce the indebtedness which would otherwise arise in relation to their living costs while at University.
We greatly value our ability to offer this support. Over time, and consistent with changes in the availability of bursaries across the collegiate University, I would like to see such funds being available to a wider range of students. At present, of the £119,000 per year Keble provides to support the 109 students mentioned above, only £37,000 is covered by permanent endowment. Even that requires approximately
£1 million of endowment to generate the necessary annual income. So, we have a long way to go to guarantee our future provision of this support, let alone extend it either in amount or to a wider group of recipients in the so-called “squeezed middle”. There is also the quite separate and important question of financial support for our graduate applicants which is a major continuing concern in many subject areas. Over time we also want to ensure that we have endowment to fund a significant range of graduate scholarships.
You will note that I’ve left the politics out of this. I take the view that there
is no realistic prospect of any future government returning us to the halcyon days of my youth when all student finance was in the form of grants which we did not need to pay back. I and others like me were very fortunate.
Sir Jonathan Phillips
Warden
3