A wealthy benefactor will today pledge Oxford University up to £36m to help it combat any shortfall in cash as a result of the recession.
Former Keble College alumni Dr James Martin, who made his fortune through books on information technology, has promised to match any research donations made to the university up to the tune of $50m (£36m).
His pledge comes at a time when staff at other universities in the UK are pursuing more modest aims, such as fighting plans for the wholesale closure of three departments at Liverpool University and a threat to axe Reading University's School of Health and Social Care.
Dr Martin's offer will boost cash for Oxford's newly established 21st Century School, sponsored by him to conduct research into problems facing the world such as climate change and ageing.
"My view is that, while we may be distracted by today's credit crunch, we must not forget the bigger picture – that we need to safeguard a future for the generations that follow us," he said.
Dr Ian Goldin, director of the 21st Century School, said: "I was concerned, as anyone involved in higher education would be, that the economic crisis would undermine people's willingness to donate. This wonderful new generation of resources has therefore been timely. Anyone giving will know they are contributing towards providing twice the money they have come forward with."
Dr Goldin said the first donation – to be matched by Dr Martin – had already come in with the university being offered £800,000 to conduct research into inner-city life.
Dr Martin said he would be happy to spend all the $50m he had pledged "because it would mean money was coming in for very important research".
He said he had visited several universities before opting to invest in Oxford "because I thought it would give the best opportunity for world-class research".
In addition to the $50m pledge, the £100m Dr Martin spent to set up the 21st Century School is thought to be the largest contribution ever donated to a UK university.
Meanwhile, the powerful university senate at Reading University, which represents academics, last night voted to approve plans to axe its School of Health and Social Care. A final decision will be taken by the university's ruling council tomorrow week.
At Liverpool University the senate failed to debate a motion calling for a decision on closures to be delayed and rejected a move to withdraw the plans.
Sally Hunt, general secretary of University and College Union (UCU) – the university lecturers' union – who spent yesterday morning at a demonstration in Reading against proposed cuts at the university there, stressed she was "very pleased" with the pledge by Dr Martin to Oxford University.
But she added: "The Government says university funding is OK, but it is not OK. "There are less staff per student and a whole range of departments facing funding cuts or being closed."
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Tycoon gives Oxford £36m to tackle threat of climate change
Fast-track plan to turn jobless into teachers
People who lose their jobs in the recession will be given the chance to become teachers in just six months under a fast-track route to the classroom to be unveiled today.
Teacher-training courses will be cut from a year to six months from September as the Government encourages "high-calibre" people to change profession midway through their career. The scheme will also be open to graduates; many of the 400,000 students who leave university this summer will be looking to the public sector rather than the City or the law.
From next year, some 200 high-flying teachers will be picked out each year for a fast-track promotion under which they could become headteachers within just four years.
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Universities 'dumb down' and ignore cheating, MPs told
Universities should be stripped of their powers to award degrees if evidence emerges that they have "dumbed down", MPs heard yesterday.
Professor Geoffrey Alderman, the former academic chairman who caused uproar last year by claiming lecturers were under pressure to "mark positively" and turn a blind eye to plagiarism, told a Commons Select committee monitoring higher education that there had been a "systematic failure" to maintain degree standards for the past 20 years.
"In particular, vice-chancellors have permitted and indeed encouraged the decline in academic standards in the desperate search for (a) increased income from 'full cost' fee-paying international students, (b) more favourable student retention rates, and (c) high or higher positions in various 'rankings' or 'league tables' published by a variety of media," Professor Alderman said.
"Failing or expelling a non-European Union student can have serious knock-on implications as the word gets out. In the modern, mass higher education system, it seems, there must be prizes for all because the student is the customer and the customer must walk away with something for his or her money."
He said the only way to sustain standards was to give tougher powers to the sector's watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency, to crack down on universities. "The current situation, whereby universities enjoy degree-awarding powers in perpetuity, is insupportable," he said."Where an institution is found to be derelict in its supreme duty to maintain standards ... financial penalties should be levied, followed, if necessary by the partial or complete withdrawal of the authority to award degrees."
He added: "The decline in academic standards has been facilitated by weak or non-existent survellance of them. Students who would formerly have failed their degrees are being passed and students who would formerly have been awarded very respectable lower seconds are now being awarded upper seconds and even firsts.
"Students – I mean British students as well as students from overseas – are being admitted to commence their studies with levels of English so poor that universities are having to run remedial English courses to ensure that new entrants possess at least a basic level of literacy at the ouset of their studies. Cheating is rampant, encouraged in part by lenient penalties."
He cited figures to show that the number of firsts awarded by universities had doubled in the past decade, while the student population had gone up by less than half. In addition, a survey by the Higher Education Academy had revealed 9,000 cases of plagiarism in the past year, only 143 of which had resulted in expulsion.
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