Balliol College Annual Record 2011

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The Master's Letter

Other articles published in the print version of the Balliol College Annual Record 2011.

The Master's Letter

This is my last letter as Master and it seems a natural time for reflection. On this occasion I will therefore dwell more briefly than usual on the current year. But the present has a habit of pressing in. And, most sadly, I find myself for the second year running having to report on the death of Balliol’s Visitor. Lord (Alan) Rodger died of a brain tumour on 26th June. Alan started as Visitor only last November and so may not be known to many of you. He was a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol in 1969, before he moved to greater heights, and I remember him then as now as an exceptional man, wonderfully clear and direct in argument, totally modest, down to earth, and with an impish sense of humour. Alan will be succeeded by the Right Honorable Lord (Robert) Reed, PC (1978).

Equally sadly and only a few weeks earlier, came the news of the totally unexpected death of the former Master, Barry Blumberg. Another wonderful man: Barry was endlessly outgoing, endlessly energetic and, above all, endlessly curious, and curious without embarrassment. Post the Mastership, he went on to investigate ‘small’ things such as the possible existence of life elsewhere in the universe. 

Despite the sadness, there have of course been some special events too. Among many, three stand out. The first was a gathering of Pathfinders and their hosts at a dinner in the British Embassy in Washington last November (courtesy of Sir Nigel Sheinwald) to mark a gift by Matthew Westerman which not only endows the scheme in perpetuity, but also allows for its extension to Asia. Balliol has always been global in its perspective and this enhancement of the Pathfinder programme is an excellent addition to this highly valued scheme.

The second was the springing into action of the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute (BII) – a project particularly close to my heart. Five strands of research are well underway and, in June, we held an official ‘Launch’. At present the BII runs on a shoe string, but I am convinced that over the longer run it will make a major contribution to our education and research, especially that of our graduates. It seems so obvious that Oxford colleges are ‘naturals’ when it comes to bringing disciplines together. Instead of taking this for granted as an activity that occurs just over coffee or lunch, the BII will foster initial ideas and take those that flourish on to major research projects.

Last, in this short selection, was the opening for the most major donors, of our Historic Collections Centre at St Cross. You will have read about this elsewhere, but there is no substitute for seeing it. The whole project has been brilliantly masterminded by John Jones; the result is functionally deeply satisfying (providing both superb storage and display facilities for our archives and freeing much needed space in the Library at Broad Street); it is aesthetically appealing and is imbued with a deep sense of history.

Of course the other major event, but not one in which I played a part, was the election of the new Master, Professor Sir Drummond Bone. I am personally delighted with the choice and I will be making a formal handover to Drummond at the Balliol Society Dinner on 1 October.

Our Final Examination results are another story. Frankly they are a disgrace. We are as low as 18th in the Norrington Table and I am both deeply disappointed and very cross, including with myself, wondering what more I could have done. When the results slipped, sharply and suddenly two years ago, I instigated an inquiry. Regrettably no immediate and easy solution has presented itself. The downward movement then and now is spread widely across subjects; there have been no big shifts in the make-up of the Tutorial Fellows, nor any changes as yet identified in the competition for places, the standards of admission, or in teaching practices. We have already put in place a range of measures: greater rigour about collections, closer monitoring of student progress, especially in the first year, and we are reviewing our admissions process. These will, inevitably, take time to bear fruit. Until we are able to pinpoint causes, the best advice, both to tutors and students, may be the same as that to the golfer who had experimented with every gimmick in the book, but whose drives kept falling short ‘Try a bloody sight harder!’

Fortunately, if we look beyond the confines of the Norrington Table, there is much to celebrate. Prizes have been won in Legal History, in Philosophy, Chemistry, History and Engineering; Ravi Shanmugam (2010) was a member of the winning team at the annual Varsity Chess Match; Doireann Lalor (DPhil Modern Languages) has been granted one of only seven Vice-Chancellor’s Civic Awards for 2011 in recognition of her outstanding individual achievement and commitment to volunteering in the local community and wider world; and Ian Bayley (1997), who recently won the BBC Brain of Britain title, is now Mastermind 2011.

Balliol academics have also been distinguishing themselves. Inter alia, Lyndal Roper has been appointed the Regius Chair of Modern History and she and Andrew Hurrell elected to the British Academy; Timothy Wilson, Rosalind Thomas, Ian Goldin and Robin Choudhury have gained the title of Professor; Hagan Bayley (now at Hertford), Alan Grafen (now at St John’s College) and Clare Grey (now in Cambridge) were all elected to the Royal Society; Peter Diamond, Visiting Fellow 1973, was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and Nick Trefethen a Gold Medal in Mathematics; and Martin Burton is the first practising clinician to be appointed to be Director of the UK Cochrane Centre.

A longer term perspective

Amazingly, it is fourteen years since I wrote the first of these letters and, yet more extraordinarily, forty-two years since I became a Fellow and Tutor. Thinking back over this period, I am reminded most of all of something I say to Freshers: ‘When we selected you, we thought not of who you are, but of the person you could become’. I feel the same about myself. My time as a PPE tutor was transformational. If you have been to a Balliol dinner you may have heard me refer to the importance of ‘the company you keep’ and the company of the PPE tutors plus the wonderful students whom I taught (and who taught me!) was encouraging and stretching beyond belief.

The journey as Master has been equally demanding and rewarding. And my interactions with each part of the College – the students, the staff, the Fellows and the alumni – have certainly all had elements of both demand and reward! But overall what shines out is the extraordinary way in which the multiple strongly-held, well argued and frequently iconoclastic opinions of this diverse group come together in an atmosphere that is both informal and intellectually serious at the highest level. Especially as Master, I have been deeply impressed by the way in which whenever there is a major issue, the Governing Body rises to the challenge, debates it thoroughly, focuses on the merit of the arguments and then takes a good decision.

This is deliberative democracy at its very best. But, we must never be complacent. A recent challenge has been the question of whether the governance of the College is sufficiently adapted to today’s fast moving and more competitive world, with calls both for a more executive style of decision taking and for greater stakeholder involvement, most obviously of alumni. You will recall the University proposal for external Trustees (the Harvard model) to take overall financial control. This was rejected on, in my view, good grounds – in particular the argument that for institutions in which effort is intimately linked to commitment, executive style command and control is ultimately counter-productive.

However, while the University proposals may have been rejected, this does not mean that at Balliol we reject the idea of greater participation (including that of the alumni) nor that we care little for effective decision taking. A number of the changes over my time as Master have, I suggest, enhanced our decision-making processes. These include increased involvement of Foundation Fellows and Old Members in our strategic discussions and thinking; delegating decision making powers from Governing Body to the Academic and Executive Committees; and the professionalisation of key senior posts (Senior Tutor, Development Director and both Bursars). This last point, while clearly necessary, might appear at odds with the deliberative democracy process I lauded earlier. Not so – we now have three Vice-Masters (Academic, Development and Executive), whose job it is to work closely with their corresponding full-time professionals. These Vice-Masters, drawn from the Tutorial Fellowship and holding post for just four years, provide the counterbalance to any centralisation of power and together with the greater delegation of decision making, produce a system, I would argue, in which the ‘republic of letters’ is well matched to modern day pressures.

I guess I cannot complete this last Master’s letter without mention of what has probably been a dominant feature of my years at Balliol (the forty-two every bit as much as the fourteen). As I have frequently said, Balliol’s academic fame far exceeds its wealth and one of the greatest concerns of my Mastership has been to try to tackle this imbalance. Internally, we have done well with tight control of costs (small surpluses on the management accounts for the past five years and further surplus forecast for the year ahead), good stewardship of our endowment and, increasing success in growing other sources of income (especially conferences).

So far so good – but, as you may also have heard me say frequently, the essential core of any change in the balance has to come from fund-raising. As recently as the early 1990s most alumni were not aware that Balliol was in need of financial support; there were Fellows who worried that private money could skew the College’s academic priorities; and many politically active students were opposed. All this has changed. Students help us in telethons; our Development Director is a fully accepted member of Governing Body, and nearly 25 per cent of you support us every year. In the four years to 2010 we raised just under £3 million per year – and in 2010/2011 the sum raised is over £4 million.

Good as this is, it is not enough and we continue to struggle against the odds. First, the recent reductions in the funding of universities are only the tip of a far larger iceberg. For nearly thirty years, the public funding of universities (and of Oxford and Cambridge in particular) has been progressively reduced. The result today is that averaged across the University every undergraduate student costs us approximately £8,000 more p.a. than we now receive in funding (whether direct from Government or via student loans). Second, increasing our endowment substantially in the face of the adverse external financial climate is extremely challenging. Here is just one point of context – in the bull market of the 80s and 90s the FTSE rose seven fold (from 1000 in 1984 to its peak of 6950 in 1999). It has never since approached that level and at the time of writing, mid-August, we are one third below that peak and falling.

In short, we have been running up an escalator that has been going down-hill fast. In terms of fundraising, we are therefore extremely grateful to all those of you who have been supportive but we must all do more – much more.

Despite the struggles, for me this has (mostly) been a golden period. Although, academically the last three years’ results have been deeply disappointing, for the eleven years before that – 1998 to 2008 – inclusive, Balliol obtained more first class degrees than any other college. We have two new research institutes – the Oxford Internet Institute launched in 2001 and the Balliol Interdisciplinary Institute set up last year. Balliol continues to attract exceptional graduates – outstanding as scholars and with a huge energy – and quite rightly we have doubled their numbers (but not at the expense of undergraduate numbers nor of the integration of the student body). And, as highlighted above, with the acquisition of St Cross, we now have a superb archive centre and are able to put the main library on to a whole new footing.

Other areas of activity have also been flourishing. Our rowers have reached levels not seen since the 1950s. The men went Head of the River in 2008, the women in 2010 and again in 2011. The Choir is widely recognised as being in one of its best periods ever, the Sunday Concerts continue to be the envy of Oxford, and last term András Schiff, our recently appointed Special Supernumerary Fellow, gave a stunning first concert in a series of recitals to be held in Balliol Hall. Some superb gifts of sculpture and art complete the picture.

Balliol should also take pride in its buildings record over the last twenty years. Five significant building projects have all been completed on time and within or under budget – the four in my period being the Jowett Walk extension, the rebuilding of 1 St Giles for use by the OII, a new Food Court alongside the Hall, and the conversion of St Cross Church.

These multiple achievements have only been possible because of the contribution of the Fellows; an exceptional set of College Officers; a highly dedicated hard working and fully professional staff; the close cooperation, energy and imagination of the students; and, last but not least, because of the financial support of our alumni. I am very grateful to everyone.

Closing Remarks

All I wish to add is that the most enduring and important feature of Balliol resides in its values. I have sometimes said that what is special about Balliol is that it takes people of great talent and energy and encourages them, above all else, to do two things: to think for themselves while also thinking of others. It has been an immense privilege to be a Tutor and then Master. I have gained more than words can tell. As Peggotty and I move on to the next stage in our lives I will continue to watch with interest and great affection and I wish the College and the new Master, Drummond Bone, every possible success.

Andrew Graham

Postscript

There is one event that happened too late to be recorded in the printed version of this letter, but which I would like to add to this web version. At the end of September, Jon and Patricia Moynihan gave Peggotty and me and some fifty guests a wonderful dinner at their house in London. At the dinner Jon announced that he and Patricia were funding an annual concert in Peggotty’s name in recognition of all she has also done for Balliol. I, more than anyone, know how large has been her contribution both to Balliol and to me personally and, as well as thanking Jon and Patricia, I thank her with all my heart.