The Oxford Colleges' Accounts 2001-02
Puzzles, Posers, Pot-Pourri

• One systematic puzzle: in each college's detailed Internal Account V, the figure for total expenditure (excluding spending on premises) is arrived at four lines from the bottom. When this figure is transferred to the Consolidated Revenue Statement I (3rd entry under Expenditure), it mysteriously gets reduced, by exactly the amounts of Common Table (the Dining Hall costs), College Hospitality and Entertainment. Surely this couldn't betoken the actuarial equivalent of a guilty conscience?


• How does Pembroke earn £3 a year from agricultural land, and Teddy Hall £4? Does one of the Dons work an allotment or are the farmers of Cumbria in clover? I think we should be told.


• Why has New College, one of the richest, slipped from 4th place in the Oxford league in 1997 to 11th in 2001/2 (28th in the 'stockmarket performance' ranking), with a decrease in its total income? And who is benefiting from its £5 million loan (Statement VII)?


• What gives at St Peter's library, with its £7,000+ fines caning? (Statement I) And at Somerville, with its £50K nursery operation (Statement IV/V). Teddy Hall, on the other hand, shells out a bursary of a full £53 (Statement II), while in 2000/1 Magdalen gave its school £355 and in 2001/2, nothing. Ah, sweet charity.


• The Big Other. In Statements IV & V there are entries for unspecified "miscellaneous expenditure", some of which are pretty large, even by Oxford standards. The league leader here is Worcester, with £248K, and there are four other Colleges at around £200K. The University "other expenditure" total is over £3 million.


• In 2000 University College earned £87K (in 2001 £54K) from a company called 'Fleximist Limited'. Is this perhaps a manufacturer of opaque university/college structures?


• How did All Souls cop £400K from "mineral sales" in 2001? (Statements VI, VII) Note, by the way, its £23/26 million steaming in and out. And is it wise to have £11 million at the bank?


• Intriguing Brasenose entries: Machine commissions £4,427 (Statement I) and Brazen Nose costs £15,561 (Statement IV). Lavish Balliol entry (Statement VI): Portrait fund £452,023.


• Magdalen, it seems (Statement I) has actually gone into the wine trade (£187.5K profit in 2000/1, £14K in 2001/2), or perhaps this is just its chapel-heavy solace.


• What on earth has been happening at Christ Church and Queen's, whose dividend incomes have worse than halved over the two-year period 2000-2002 (see stockmarket league table).

  And so forth... file continually updated, please revisit

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