For the Public Good

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

As English universities seek more diverse means of funding, Jill Pellew looks at the ways in which philanthropists helped to establish universities in three very different locations during the early 20th century.

George V and Queen Mary make their way down Park Street, Bristol having just opened the university's Wills Memorial Building, 1925. Getty Images/Hulton ArchiveSince the Second World War English universities have been funded predominantly by an increasingly intrusive state. Today we are adjusting to the idea that higher education is a commodity rather than a public good, which is why it is worth looking at an earlier period in the development of English universities, when there was greater awareness of diverse sources of funding by those responsible for the disbursement of public grants.

The principle of diversity was a deliberate policy of the University Grants Committee (UGC), a government agency formed in 1919, which understood that central and local government finance needed to underpin institutions that were established by public philanthropy. From the founding of the first civic universities in the mid-19th century, funding came through private donations of capital (such as land and buildings) and endowment, plus modest fee income backed by local authority rate support. From 1889 there was also a central government grant to cover recurrent expenditure. Even though Treasury subvention steadily increased after the First World War, throughout the interwar period the UGC, which allocated grants at one remove from the Treasury, encouraged the cultural differences between universities and always argued the case for diversity. The history of the founding and early funding of three university institutions in different cultural settings in the first half of the 20th century – Bristol, Reading and Nottingham – illustrates the role that private support continued to play until after the Second World War. It also highlights the danger of over-dependence on a single element of funding.

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