Goldman Sachs has made a donation of £1.1 million to Exeter College, under the condition that the college provides £30, 000 a year in financial support for students via the hardship fund.
The college’s rector Frances Cairncross said, “This very welcome gift from Goldman Sachs is tied specifically by the donor to relieving student hardship. It will be added to our endowment and will allow us, under our spending rules, to use just over £30,000 a year to help students in financial need.”
Former JCR President Ed Nickell criticised the way the college manages their hardship provision. “From what I’ve gleaned, Exeter, uniquely among Oxford colleges, operates on a principle of charging all students as much of their living costs as possible, then retrospectively subsiding less well off students with hardship grants. Regardless of what one thinks of the principle, it has failed in practice.
“Do we not have enough less well off students? Do they not apply? Either way, we should be worried. I tried tweaking the hardship grant system last year to include more anonymity and an eligibility criteria but it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact.”
The gift has been made as part of the bank’s charitable arm ‘Goldman Sachs Gives’. The bank has a history of supporting educational institutions charitably and have previously endowed half a million pounds worth of scholarships at Eton, and have donated to Balliol and Christ Church in recent years.
Exeter students, who have just stopped a hall strike to protest the college’s £840 annual catering charge, welcomed the grant. Rowan Lennox commented, a PPE second year, “Great to see the much maligned finance sector making a serious contribution to social mobility.”
However, some students noted flaws in the way the fund has been administered in the past. Second year Kat Farmer told Cherwell, “As someone who applies regularly for hardship funds, I understand how important they are to students. I’d really like to see college means test people for this money as currently you have to apply and prove you have run out of money.
“Personally I really worry about my finances at uni and spend every holiday working fifty hour weeks to make sure I can afford the next term. This means that I often end up missing out on the hardship fund.”
divert existing provisions elsewhere. In light of the ongoing student protests over the cost of the catering charge at Exeter, this donation could mean that more students are able to receive money from the college and mitigate the impact of the £800 fee.
Alternatively, Exeter could maintain the scope of hardship provisions as it currently exists, the increased cash flow would then allow the college to reduce the catering fee for all students.
The college have declined to comment on which of these two options they will take and have not been forthcoming with statistics regarding how many students benefit from already existing hardship funds and what the gift means in practical terms for students.
