As seen in the credits, this early film was made by the cameraman at the Scala Cinema in Leeds, a practice that was not unusual at that time.  The cinema, opened on 24th June 1922, had 1,692 seats and was located at 12 Albion Place (though Geoff Mellor has it on the adjoining Lands Lane).  It unfortunately closed in August 1957 to become a furniture showroom – a fate that befell too many others (the excellent online photographic archive of Leeds, Leodis, has a photo from 1928 and the online...

As seen in the credits, this early film was made by the cameraman at the Scala Cinema in Leeds, a practice that was not unusual at that time.  The cinema, opened on 24th June 1922, had 1,692 seats and was located at 12 Albion Place (though Geoff Mellor has it on the adjoining Lands Lane).  It unfortunately closed in August 1957 to become a furniture showroom – a fate that befell too many others (the excellent online photographic archive of Leeds, Leodis, has a photo from 1928 and the online Cinema Treasures has additional information).  According to Mellor it held the very first ‘sounds-on-film’ screenings in the district in 1927.

This is the only example of a university commissioned film made prior to the Second World War, and the only university fund raising film, held by the YFA.  From the decades after the war the Archive has several promotional films made by Yorkshire universities – see the Context for Talk about Leeds – but these are designed to sell themselves to prospective students rather than raise funds.  For a look at student life at Leeds University between the wars see the first volume of Richard Hoggart’s autobiography A Local Habitation.

It is not clear how much of a success the fund raising appeal was.  Clearly money was hoped to be raised to build new university buildings to house various departments, the film singling out several, as well as a new library.  The film shows the undercroft, a rather impoverished looking home for the existing library, with its 65,000 volumes (at least as contrasted with that of Oxford and Bristol), now home of the University Archives.  This was located in the Gothic style Great Hall, opened in 1894, which was itself partly paid for by public appeal (at a cost of around £22,000). When the first Librarian of the University, Fanny Passavant, retired in 1919, her successor, Dr Richard Offor, was charged with the task of building a new Library.  The money for this though came entirely from a donation of £100,000 from Lord Brotherton, a former Lord Mayor of Leeds, who founded a successful chemical works in Wakefield (which is still there), for which town he was twice a Tory MP.  Brotherton laid the building's foundation stone in 1930, the year in which he died, and it was opened as the Brotherton Library in 1936.

Brotherton’s collection of some 80,000 rare books and manuscripts was also donated to the University after his death, including a copy of the First Folio (1623) of Shakespeare’s works.  Brotherton also provided an endowment to expand the collection, which has now doubled in size.  The main room of the library was modelled on the British Museum Reading Room, only wider.  With its Beaux-Arts style it is now a Grade II listed building, housing the main collections in arts, social sciences and law, and various Special Collections, as well as the University Library's administration.   A new library, the Edward Boyle Library, opened in 1975, is home to the science and engineering books, whilst the Health Sciences Library is in the Worsley Building.

Recently the University received a gift of £9 million (its biggest ever donation) from Irvine Laidlaw, after whom a new state-of-the-art library on Woodhouse Lane will be named, due to open in the spring of 2015.  Laidlaw, a regular donor to the University, studied economics at Leeds in the early 1960s. 

The other major project to be undertaken between the wars was the Parkinson Building, with construction starting in 1938, although with the interruption of the war not completed until 1951.  It was named after Frank Parkinson who donated £200,000 towards the cost.  Parkinson was part owner of the electrical manufacturing company Crompton Parkinson, with a large factory at Guiseley (finally demolished in 2006).  He had studied electrical engineering at Leeds University, starting in 1908. The impressive looking art deco Parkinson Building is also Grade II listed.  It isn’t clear whether this ever housed any of the departments mentioned as requiring new premises in the film, though it certainly doesn’t now: they are all in new, mainly brutalist, buildings, built as part of the large post-war expansion.

Prior to the war fund raising was more of an issue for universities than after the war when there was more state funding, especially in science and technology, needed for the post- war world.  On the recommendations of the Anderson Committee, which reported in 1960, the Education Act of 1962 introduced mandatory student maintenance grants, funded by local education authorities. Prior to this there were highly competitive scholarships: state, municipal and county.   By 1963 nearly 70% of students were receiving grants almost wholly from public funds.  In that year the Robbins Committee called for a "massive" expansion in higher education, from 4% in universities and 8% in all, to 10% and 17% respectively.  This led to a growth in universities, the so-called plate glass universities, such as York. 

The university population has continued to grow since then – though not during the 1970s, when it actually fell, from one in seven 18-year-olds to one in eight, but up to one in five by 1990.  On being elected in 1979 the Thatcher government immediately cut £100 million from the HE budget, and knocked off a further 17% from the government block grants to universities within the next four years – although student grants were increased from £380 to £1,430 in 1980. After the 1985 Jarrett Report, it took a step further by directly linking grants to universities to their performance.  University student numbers were further boosted when polytechnics were allowed to call themselves universities in 1992.  The Education (Student Loans) Act of 1990 introduced 'top-up' loans for HE students, developing the ground for Labour to scrap grants in 1997 and replace them with student loans the following year.   

In the meantime, in 1994, the top 20 universities (which were receiving two thirds of UK research grants and contract funding) formed the ‘Russell Group’.  By this time funding per student had dropped by 40% since the mid-1970s, while numbers of full-time students had reached around 2 million (around a third of the age group).  This huge increase in student numbers put pressure on state financing, hence the major changes in Higher Education funding in recent years.  Recent research shows that annual public spending on teaching and research in England will drop to just 15 per cent – the lowest in more than a century.

Universities get funding from a variety of sources.  The decreasing government funding is distributed by the Higher Education Funding Council (for England).   Tuition fees (including form postgraduates and overseas students), is rising from some 29% of universities' total funding to around 50%, according recent estimates.  The other sources are endowments and investments, private research funding, monies for providing accommodation to students, consultancy services and clinical services for the National Health Service, and fund raising. 

The great majority of universities are charities, and fund raising remains an important source of funding.  A recent Ross-CASE Survey of Gifts and Costs of Voluntary Giving to Higher Education in the UK – carried out on behalf of the Ross Group of university development directors – reported that UK universities raised £548 million from alumni, other supporters and charities during 2006/2007.  To raise this amount £55 million was spent on fundraising activities, with the older universities spending more on this and receiving more: with a median value of £3.1 million, as against a median value of just over £140,000 for newer universities. This source of funding has been steadily growing.  Funds raised through voluntary giving are matched by the Higher Education Funding Council for England – thereby favouring those already at the high end of the scale.

Leeds University has recently announced plans to raise £60m through donors, a target it has already half reached.  This is the first major fundraising campaign the University has had since the one represented in this film, of 1925.  It currently receives donations from about 10,000 of its 200,000 alumni community, and recently had a £2.5m gift from science graduate Peter Cheney and his wife Susan to establish a programme of fellowships.   They have also recently started the Arts Fundraising Fellowship Programme under the auspices of DARE, their partnership with Opera North.   This fund raising is being encouraged by Leeds University Chancellor, Melvyn Bragg, who has recently done much to promote regional film archives, and especially home movies, through his BBC television series Reel History of Britain.  It is to be hoped that Melvyn might also be supportive of the efforts of the regional film archives to raise money for their work.

References

 

Geoff Mellor, Movie Makers and Picture Palaces, Bradford Libraries, 1996.

Scala Cinema, Cinema Treasures

The Scala Cinema, Leodis

Guiseley loses another part of its industrial heritage, Ilkley Gazette, 21 September 2006

Donor books his place on campus, The Yorkshire Post, 29th November 2013

Adrian Salmon, ‘Do you think of universities as charitable institutions?’, The Guardian, 24th March, 2011.

University Fundraising

University of Sheffield, Where does the money come from?

Taxpayer funding of universities 'to drop to 100 year low', The Telegraph, 5th January 2012

Carol Dyhouse, Going to university: funding, costs, benefits, History and Policy

 

Further Reading

 

Richard Hoggart, A Local Habitation, Oxford Paperbacks, new edition, 1989.