30
The Keble Review 2013
College Financial Report
The bad news is that custom
dictates that the Bursar should
write 700 words on the subject,
preferably with coloured pie and
bar charts to break the monotony.
Well, those who really like numbers
can be found the complete Annual
Report and Accounts of each college
in the University – in Keble’s case, all
35 pages of it.
For those with more interesting
things to do, I can summarise the
past year with a few key numbers:
Total Income: £8.9m
Total Expenditure: £8.8m
Included in total income is £361k
of gifts from Old Members to
help meet current expenditure.
This does not mean that, in the
absence of such gifts, we would
have recorded a £260k deficit
on operations. It does mean that
we should have had to reduce
our discretionary expenditure on
bursaries, scholarships, funding
for sports and arts, repairs and
maintenance and similarly important
items. Those gifts really do make a
difference.
Charities don’t make ‘profits’, and
a surplus in a year could be seen a
simply shifting resource from the
current generation of students to
a future generation. However, we
think it prudent to build up a cash
reserve for the proverbial rainy
day, so this year’s surplus of £97k
is welcome. The cash reserve
currently stands at £753k.
Endowment at Start of Year: £27.7m
Endowment at End of Year: £31.2m
Investment Return: 12.9%
A welcome improvement in
investment return after several
difficult years. In the course of the
year we completed the transfer
of endowment assets to OUEM,
the University’s in-house fund
management group. The value
of the endowment at year-end
is struck after transferring out
£899k to fund College activities
and transferring in £832k in new
endowment gifts – again, largely
from Old Members.
Depreciation charge: £1.2m
Capital expenditure: £1.0m
Depreciation, a non-cash charge
against income, may seem a dry
accounting concept. But it is in
fact a key measure of the health
of the College. Keble has one of
the highest depreciation charges of
any college, which means that we
are managing to achieve a surplus
despite writing down the value of
our buildings and machinery at a
more rapid rate than most. It’s not
that we are actually wearing out
the buildings faster: it’s that we
are making more pessimistic (or, I
would argue, realistic) assumptions
about how much it costs to keep
them up. That in turn means that
we can spend more on capital
improvements without having to
borrow. As a result, the College’s
buildings are in pretty good shape.
But where are the charts? This
year, rather than finding yet more
colourful ways to express Keble
numbers, I thought I might compare
Keble with its peers, the other 29
‘mixed’ colleges (that is, colleges
that have both undergraduate
and graduate students). Perhaps
the most significant metric is
‘taxable assets’. These consist of
endowments, cash reserves and
the capitalised value of trading
activities (principally conferences:
the capital value of trading activities
is deemed to be 7.5x their annual
gross income). Taxable assets are
a key measure of a college’s ability
to support its charitable activities
above and beyond the income those
activities generate.
Here’s how we look:
Our position in the table – 19th
out of 30 – reflects a steady
improvement over the past 20
years. In 1993 Keble was still a
recipient college: that is, it received
an annual grant under the College
Contributions Scheme, whereby the
better-off are taxed to subsidise the
poorer colleges. We are now, albeit
in a very modest way, a tax-payer.
The chart illustrates the very
considerable disparity in resources
available to the colleges. That Keble,
one of the largest colleges in terms
of student numbers, is able to match
its wealthier peers in the quality of
both academic and non-academic
provision, should be a source of
pride to all who support it.
Another year, another boring financial review. That’s the good news.
A college’s finances should be boring. No surprises!
Roger Boden
Bursar
