This article is taken from the May 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
Who’d be an Oxbridge Head of House these days? To be Master of an Oxford or Cambridge college, living a long life of relative luxury and leisure in the lodge, was once the most prized sinecure in Britain. Now the post has been debased by interminable meetings, institutional pettifoggery and political grandstanding.
Worse still, the new generation of “celebrity” heads are often clueless about how college communities work, some wishing to be treated like minor royalty, some pining to be the students’ best friend.
In time past, colleges chose their heads as medieval monks did their abbot: by election from within. It was rare for a Master not to be a college member, and almost unheard of for him (until the Victorian female colleges emerged) to come from outside the university — an Oxbridge alumnus from the church, say, or a great public school.
The result was a deep knowledge of each college’s culture and conduct, which ensured stability.
Fellows appointed well-known peers who could manage intramural affairs, handling often disagreeable and factional academics with a fair, steady hand. Such figures rarely set the world alight by their intellectual brilliance: famous Heads like John Wycliffe, Matthew Parker, Richard Bentley, Benjamin Jowett, Henry Montagu Butler, plus his great-nephew Rab Butler are the outliers.
Since appointments were until death, many colleges enjoyed long periods free of politicking and peacocking about succession. Thomas Gaisford and Henry Liddell stewarded Christ Church for 60 years (1831–1891); William Webb and Edward Atkinson helmed Clare for a full century (1815–1915).
Headhunters are paid eyewatering sums to stalk globetrotting execs
But now fundraising dominates strategy. Headhunters are paid eyewatering sums to stalk globetrotting execs, not knowing what heads to hunt except those who are administering something. Of the 70 Oxbridge colleges, 12 are led by career administrators; 13 by someone from the political world, especially the diplomatic and civil service; 11 (eight in Oxford) by lawyers and judges. Rather more interesting hires are the distinguished soldiers who steward Emmanuel and Exeter.
Some colleges yearn for anybody famous and reach for media, even journalism — all five are in Cambridge. Given their histories, many colleges are desperate to appoint their “first female” head. In Oxford, a slight majority are female (20 of 39); in Cambridge, a slight minority (14 of 31).
Some risks don’t come off. Whilst a figure from advertising thrives at New College, the anti-intellectualism of a former police chief (St Anne’s) and current financier (Queens’) has depressed those communities; few are surprised that the latter is standing down early. Meanwhile, actual academics play second fiddle, accounting for only 37 per cent of college heads: 15 of 39 in Oxford, 11 of 31 in Cambridge. More strikingly, whilst 12 are academics in STEM subjects, only eight study the arts and humanities.
For Oxbridge heads to flourish, the job should be made less managerial, less flashy and more intellectual. For since the universities now elect fixed-term chancellors (ten years) and vice-chancellors (seven), it’s long-serving, sensible heads, within college walls, who can best preserve the institutional memory of what works — and, indeed, what does not.
