Calendar: 1975-1976 Page 403

Annual Report of the Delegacy xxxi and administrative skill we can find and there is much of both here to that end There is also inevitably concern among students over rising refectory prices It is not permitted by the UGC to budget for deficit in catering that is to say for the diversion of funds allocated say for teaching and research to the subsidising of catering The refectory is not commercial enterprise that is it is not run for profit It also enjoys advantages not generally accorded to commercial enterprises Its prices do not have to take into account as well as profits rent rates heating and lighting cleaning and internal maintenance and decoration With these elements of subsidy it is possible to cater more cheaply than could be done outside especially as we do manage to absorb very considerable deficit somehow into the College general account But there is limit to this and we may have reached it As the costs of materials and labour rise therefore it is difficult to see how prices can fail to rise too though we shall do our very best to contain increases and still offer food more cheaply than it can be bought outside can may say find modest sources of subsidy to refectories without falling foul of the UGC and inviting cut in our next quinquennial allocation which would be what would threaten us if we budgeted for deficit out of our recurrent grant but the possibility of meeting an open- ended commitment to subsidise prices is not there What do find to be effective in this general area of trying to help students over their difficulties is that students bring me odd individual cases of hardship-never their own but other people's-and it is possible to find ways of helping These cases are almost always due to the students' not receiving the due parental contribution rarely because parents are asked for it and refuse it more often because the children see that their parents are having difficult time and are reluctant to ask for money This is far from uncommon and it is one of my own chief reasons for opposing the means test on grants turn now to brief comment on some of the current developments in the Universities which are likely to affect us here The period of 1945-70 was one of strong encouragement of the Universities by successive governments Quinquennial settlements provided regularly for increases in real terms in recurrent expenditure per student this was particularly so in the settlements of 1962 and 1967 In planning for the present quinquennium it was calculated in 1969 that if the experience of earlier years was repeated an increase of expenditure per student of between and per cent could be expected