The University of Oxford has concluded its fund-raising campaign after surpassing the target of £3 billion, boosted partly by the Karnataka government and the university’s alumni and others in India.
Announcing the campaign’s conclusion during the Oration on Monday, vice-chancellor Louise Richardson said £3.4 billion was raised during the campaign called ‘Oxford Thinking’. The collection is funding a range of initiatives across the university.
Donations from India include one from the Karnataka government in February to establish a professorship in the Anthropology of India in memory of noted sociologist-anthropologist M N Srinivas, who studied at Oxford in the 1940s.
There have been overall 194 donations from India, including to the university’s Said Business School and the International Human Rights Scholarship.
Richardson said: “This campaign has lasted a very long time, but the amount raised, £3.34 billion, is the largest of any European university. We still have some way to go before catching up with our American peers.”
“This university and most of its colleges would not exist in their current form without the historic generosity of benefactors…We have a profound responsibility to invest their money wisely and to demonstrate that their confidence is well placed”.
{{/usCountry}}“This university and most of its colleges would not exist in their current form without the historic generosity of benefactors…We have a profound responsibility to invest their money wisely and to demonstrate that their confidence is well placed”.
{{/usCountry}}Oxford’s links with India go back to the sixteenth century. The Boden Chair in Sanskrit was created in 1832 and the first Indian students arrived in 1871.
The university has over 2200 Indian alumni and 170 Indian academic staff. Past students include former prime minister Manmohan Singh, writers Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth, and India’s first woman lawyer, Cornelia Sorabji.