But just look at those gardens, those buildings, those libraries, those facilities, those dinners at High Table, those perquisites that are much more than little perks. State education, these institutions? Good luck to them, for they have long contributed to genuinely high achievements of higher education. The New College of the Humanities has found itself firebranded as “odious”. Pernicious is the word for the pretence that, say, New College, Oxford (founded 1379, and handsomely privately funded for centuries), is part of a solely state system.
— Christopher Ricks, “Common cause : in defence of the New College of the Humanities”, The Times Literary Supplement, 5 August 2011, p. 14
