The University has signed a secret agreement with a Middle Eastern university to fast-track the admissions of Saudi students, The Oxford Student has learned. The pact follows a payment of £2m to Oxford by the university's chairman, a brutal and wealthy Sultan. Prince Sultan Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud is a member of the notorious royal family of Saudi Arabia, who run the country as a theocratic dictatorship and have funnelled vast amounts of wealth from the country's oil resources.
Al-Saud acts as de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, administering arbitrary justice with a cabal of family members. One Saudi academic has said of his influence: "If you fall out with him, you're finished." This week, Al-Saud was also accused of bribery in an arms contract with Britain by the former British Ambassador to Saudi.
The hushed-up deal between Prince Sultan University (PSU) and Oxford not only puts the University in breach of government education guidelines, but also violates the University's own Statutes by failing to consult Council, the ultimate decision-making body. The Saudi influence over Oxford admissions stems from the £2 million given by Al-Saud to the Ashmolean Museum in May 2005. The deal, dubbed the Ashmolean Agreement, also provided for ten scholarships at Oxford for Saudi Arabian students. A crucial aspect of the first pact was the demand that "both parties shall endeavour within one year to agree the terms of an exchange programme." A year later a Memorandum of Understanding between Oxford University and the PSU was finalised by a Saudi delegation.
On 4 May, the group met with high-ranking Oxford officials, including Vice-Chancellor John Hood who rubber-stamped the pact. The Oxford Student has obtained a copy of the contract, which Oxford University has refused to make public. The Memorandum shows that Oxford University agreed to speed up applications as a result of the £2m payment from the Sultan. It states: "In recognition of the munificent benefaction arising from the 2005 Ashmolean Agreement, Oxford will administer the ten scholarships held in the Prince's name. Oxford will endeavour to identify 4-6 colleges with resources and expertise (e.g. in law, economics, finance, computer science, English, linguistics, applied linguistics and translation) that suit PSU students. It will also seek to expedite the application process."
The promise to bypass the standard admissions procedure puts Oxford in breach of the guidelines laid out by The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. The guidelines stipulate that higher education institutes must have "policies and procedures for the recruitment and admission of students to higher education that are fair and implemented consistently. All staff involved at each stage of the admissions process need to be informed about the institution's policies, procedures and criteria for student admissions to higher education." The University also failed to consult with key members of the University who would be affected by the deal. Professor Bill Roscoe, Director of the Oxford Computing Laboratory, said: "I have no recollection of learning of the alliance with Prince Sultan University before the delegation arrived."
Critically, the deal also breaks Oxford's own Regulations, which make it clear that no such University contract can be made without the consent of Council. Statute XVI records that "No officer of the University, or any other person employed by the University... shall have authority to make any representations on behalf of the University or to enter into any contract on behalf of the University, except with the express consent of Council."
The deal was signed without discussion by the University's parliament of dons, Congregation, or permission from Council. The University's silence over the agreement appears to be a concerted effort to play down the significance of the deal. The Memorandum of Understanding has never been publicly announced. In contrast, the PSU has dedicated a web page* to the deal, hailing it as "an historic agreement". The website says: "The Memorandum of Understanding which was signed at the end of the visit marked a historical moment for both the University of Oxford and Prince Sultan University." An Oxford University spokesperson said "The Memorandum of Understanding marked the intentions of the two universities to explore areas of collaboration, but does not involve any particular commitments." She conceded that "the agreement is more attractive to the PSU than to Oxford. The initiative came more from them."
Al-Saud is a notorious and influential figure in his native country, who ordered the execution of one of his employees in 1997 for practising witchcraft against him. His office in the Saudi Capital Riyadh overlooks Justice Square, the notorious area where, every Friday, crowds gather to watch the public executions of dissidents, criminals and terrorists.
* Some time after this Akme posting the Prince Sultan University's web pages recording its agreement with Oxford were changed. For the benefit of scholars, Akme has kept the original pages and here recreates them as a single file. Also click for Oxford's PR webpage (exits Akme).
What do we spend our days arguing over in tutorials? Shades of truth in Hegel; misinterpretations of Sophocles; and the placement of commas in Wordsworth. Nitpicking is our forte, and an occupation that we excel at. When it comes to moral matters, however, we find ourselves slightly confused.
One would think that the Oxford student population would be especially sensitive to the significance of murky situations in which the law has not been broken, but a more delicate ethical sense has been irreparably altered. Thus we should be incredibly responsive as a university to the shadowy ethics that pervade the University of Oxford's contract with Prince Sultan University, the result of a two million pound donation to the University's Ashmolean museum.
Not only did this agreement violate the university's own Statutes and Regulations regarding admissions, this action trespasses against a reality far more ephemeral and ultimately more important: our University's code of ethics. This gap between technically legal and morally upright is epitomised in the difference between our student contract and other universities' codes of honour. Consider the honour system at one of America's oldest universities, the University of Virginia, which was adopted at the request of its students 160 years ago. The code makes it clear that if students lie, cheat, steal, or conduct themselves in a manner unbecoming to the University of Virginia, they will be asked to leave permanently by a council composed of their peers. Our own student contract with our colleges and the university is a remarkably bland document, requiring only that we study, keep our heads down, and pay the bills at the end. Perhaps this is not very different than the deal the university has recently struck with Prince Sultan University: smile, nod, and enjoy the lucrative returns of moral ambivalence. It is worth pointing out that Oxford's ethical record has always been dubious.
For hundreds of years, and perhaps to a certain point today, admissions were based on your pedigree: landed gentry need only apply. Indeed, there were few formal exams, with both matriculation and finals taking the form of a viva voce examination. Men arrived, gambled, whored, and left with a degree. As the world rapidly grows smaller, the 'Ashmolean Agreement' typifies the international nature of new admissions corruption: instead of your father, have your country put up the cash.
This is an academic agreement in which no academics were consulted because it is damaging to our university's academic reputation. Not only have we sacrificed our dignity in accepting money for such an pact, we also appear to have purchased academically damaged goods: Prince Sultan University is a second-rate university that divides women into a separate college which offers Interior Design as an academic department. Prince Sultan University can splash the University of Oxford all over its website, but it is impossible to find any mention of this embarrassing alliance on our own website. Oxford's name has been cheapened for the paltry sum of two million pounds. Indeed, the amount is suspiciously tiny. Two million pounds, or 14,260,351 Saudi Riyal, is an insignificant sum to either party. The Sauds control one of the richest countries in the world, and Oxford holds unaccounted wealth.
Whoever negotiated the Ashmolean agreement was obviously ignorant of either the enormous wealth of Prince Sultan University or the high price which its students hold the reputation of Oxford university. It is not for us to decide whether the crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is a corrupt man or not. It is worth pointing out that evidence seems to point overwhelmingly in that direction as the Prince Sultan made international news this week for the blatantly crooked nature of an arms deal with Britain. How much he was at fault in this matter is unresolved at the moment. However there is no doubt that this 'Ashmolean Agreement' marks a turning point in Oxford's history: the moment we were formally bought.