Conference Program

The state of UK university finances continues to receive media and political attention (Gill, 2025). In brief, there are concerns around: institutional debt levels and risks of insolvency (Ward, 2025); the inability of institutions to cover the shortfalls of research grants (Hogan 2025); a new levy on international student fees (UUK, 2025); and the declining value of income from domestic tuition and rising staff costs (UUK 2025). At the same time, many UK universities have been prioritising income through philanthropy (Daly 2013), reflected in a 93 percent increase (to £1.5bn from 171k donors) in donations between 2012 and 2022 (Beney, Miller and Motion, 2023). In 2023, Professor Dame Sally Mapstone DBE FRSE – President of Universities UK – argued that universities’ philanthropic income is ‘more important than ever’, emphasising notions of redistribution and social good with donations underpinning ‘fundamental research’ and ‘capital projects that would not otherwise be viable’. (Beney, Miller and Motion, 2023)

Whilst philanthropy is most often linked to positive outcomes in terms of teaching and research, there are also potential reputational costs and concerns about governance, transparency and integrity. The identities of major donors are often kept secret, and several UK universities have received large sums from foreign nationals linked to organisations investigated for corruption and oppression (Corderoy and Stockwell 2023). Most recently, it was revealed that the University of Edinburgh raised the equivalent of £30m from former students and donors with links to slavery, the plantation economy and exploitative wealth-gathering throughout the British empire (Carell and Osuh 2025). Although often presented as neutral and agnostic, philanthropy – particularly on a large scale – can operate to secure significant influence over welfare and social services (Webber, 2025) with donations embedded in broader asymmetrical power relations, that privilege the interests of some while silencing and marginalizing others (Levy et al. 2003). This undermines the assumed social good of philanthropy, blurring the lines between public and private interests through donations, and obscuring the potentially undemocratic nature of philanthropic income (Horvath and Powell 2016).

Adding to this debate, we present early findings from a small research project funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education (2026-2027), which combines an analysis of publicly available information around the value of current donations to UK universities and their major donors, with stakeholder interviews. Our aim is to interrogate narratives of ‘giving’ to understand (1) the extent to which these are shaped by (and serve to reproduce) an implicit acceptance that public funding is unavailable or insufficient and, (2) how details of who donors might be, and why the might be donating, are framed by a vernacular that leans towards neoliberal, corporate interests. Our findings will be crucial for understanding the roles of universities in the 21st century and whether and how they are able to maintain their independence and commitment to democracy as a greater emphasis is placed on philanthropic giving.