Free Thinking: St John’s lays out bold vision for university education free from financial concerns

St John’s College has launched a major new campaign to raise £100 million – money which will provide new means-tested support for students, and ensure that future generations of scholars fulfil their potential free from financial concerns.

The “Free Thinking” campaign will aim to raise the sum with the help of alumni and other donors. The funds will be used to expand the College’s existing programme of means-tested support for home students, and to provide further assistance to overseas scholars, graduates and researchers. The campaign is part of the University of Cambridge’s broader initiative to raise £2 billion in donations, with every penny counting towards that larger goal.

Earlier this year, St John’s unveiled its new Studentships programme - the first phase of a long-term strategy to help students who might otherwise struggle to afford the costs of a university education.

Building on existing financial support provided by the University of Cambridge, this provides home undergraduates whose household income is below £25,000 with a non-repayable grant worth more than £9,500 per year, to cover their day-to-day living expenses.

But against a backdrop of mounting student debt and dramatic changes in higher education, the Free Thinking campaign recognises that much more needs to be done. While most of the College’s alumni left St John’s with little or no debt – many of them having studied in an era before tuition fees even existed – many of today’s students face the prospect of having to take on debt several times the size of their family’s income in order to attend university.

Announcing the formal launch of the Campaign at an event in London, Professor Christopher Dobson, the Master of St John’s College, said: “I was the first person in my family to go to Oxford or Cambridge, and only the second to go to any university at all. I remember the astonishment that I felt when I realised not only that I had been accepted, but that my education was completely free.”

“Whatever the rights and wrongs of today’s funding model, the fact is that many highly talented young people from less well-off backgrounds either go to their local university to keep costs down, or abandon higher education altogether. I believe passionately, as does the College as a whole, that nobody should be denied – or indeed deny themselves – a place at Cambridge because of financial concerns.”

Through the money raised from the campaign, the College will expand elements of its student support programme, such as Studentships and Summer Bursaries, on a sliding scale, providing for those from a wider range of income groups. In addition, the campaign will enable the establishment of new funding streams to support learning and teaching at all levels, from undergraduate study through to high-level academic research.

Scholarship programmes for overseas students are already being planned, alongside further scholarships for both Master’s level and PhD students from both the UK and the wider world.

The campaign will also secure funds to expand the College’s Research Fellowships – posts open to early-career academics of the highest calibre, which allow them to focus on research without having to undertake teaching or administrative obligations.

And at the same time, a further fund will be set up to provide fully-endowed Teaching Fellowships for high-class academics who, alongside their own research, are keen to devote part of their time to inspiring the next generation of brilliant young minds. This will help to preserve Cambridge’s unique supervision system; small group teaching which encourages students to develop, express and defend their opinions and ideas.

“While we can already support our current activities, we cannot realise these further ambitions without additional resources,” Professor Dobson added. “These are exciting initiatives and ambitious academic goals, but we need to raise new funds in order to realise them and make them possible.”

Further information about the Free Thinking Campaign can be found at: http://johnian.joh.cam.ac.uk/free-thinking