Help to cash-strapped students pledge

Professor Richard is a Cambridge graduate

The new vice-chancellor of Cambridge has promised more help for cash-strapped students who wanted to attend the university.

Professor Alison Richard, who will take up the post next month, said the university's bursary scheme was already the largest in the UK.

But with the university's fees set to rise in 2006, Professor Richard told the Financial Times she wanted to extend it.

"It is vital in helping us attract students of the highest calibre without regard to their background," she said.

Higher education minister Alan Johnson told the annual conference of vice-chancellors last week that he expected English universities to spend about a third of the income they raised from fees on bursaries.

Professor Richard takes up her post next month

That could equate to about £300m extra a year for students whose families cannot afford to contribute towards the costs of their degree.

The government has insisted the watchdog that will decide whether or not universities can increase their fees to the £3,000 maximum allowed from 2006 will not interfere in admissions policies.

But the Office for Fair Access will look at the bursaries they offer before deciding to grant permission for higher fees.

Both Cambridge and Oxford are made up of individual colleges that decide which candidates they want to admit.

But the debate over whether middle class students should move aside to let in more people from working class backgrounds has sparked calls for Oxbridge admissions to be centralised and geared to a wider range of applicants.

'College system continues'

Cambridge-educated Professor Richard will become the first female vice-chancellor, roughly equivalent to a company chief executive, in the university's 800-year history.

She told the FT: "It's hard - impossible, actually - for me to imagine Cambridge without its colleges because they are fundamental to the university's identity."

Outgoing vice-chancellor Sir Alec Broers suffered a defeat last year while trying to modernise the university's labyrinthine decision-making structures.

Professor Richard said: "The issue for Cambridge is how to do this without undermining the values and qualities that have enabled it to achieve its world-class status."