Oxford University Vice-Chancellor with £232k salary says grads should be donating to their uni

The University of Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor says uni graduates should be donating to their university every year, “even if it’s just £5”.

Professor Irene Tracey, who has a salary of £542,000 a year, said that grads “should give back” to their universities because “they need it”.

The University of Oxford currently has endowment assets of over £1.7 billion, with individual colleges having their own endowments adding up to over £6.4 billion. In the last year alone, Oxford University received £222 million in public donations.

In an interview with The Telegraph, the Oxford VC says that she even encourages her own kids to donate to their unis.

Irene Tracey has three children, including grads of UCL and Durham. She said: “I keep telling my kids, ‘give back to your universities’. And even if it’s £5 a year, it doesn’t matter. It’s a vote of confidence. Because they need it.”

Via YouTube

She warned that UK unis are “falling to pieces” and said that grads had to “get behind our British universities”.

The average graduate salary in the UK is between £19 – £25k a year.

Speaking about the current Russell Group admissions scandal, which is reportedly seeing Russell Group universities accept international students with D grades onto courses that require A*s for UK students for money, she said: “You can see that most universities are making a loss on every student that they’re teaching, and that money has to come from somewhere. So where does it come from? It means you don’t refurb that lab, you don’t refurb that roof, you don’t refurb that building, and you just start falling to pieces. And that’s what you’re seeing, right?”

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She said there needs to be a “national conversation about what we want from our higher education system, how it is funded, what its purpose is and what the shape and size of it should be, because the system is creaking.”

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Featured image before edits via YouTube and Canva.