At least nine Oxford colleges invest indirectly in Mitie Group Plc, an outsourcing company whose subsidiary runs Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, a joint investigation between Cherwell and Oxford Student Action for Refugees (STAR) can reveal. 

According to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Balliol, Exeter, Hertford, Pembroke, Queen’s, St Edmund Hall, St John’s, and Wadham invest in funds which hold shares in Mitie. Although Christ Church did not provide specific information in response to the FOI request, Cherwell and STAR found the college also invests indirectly in Mitie, based on an email circulated to Christ Church students in 2025 and shared by the Oxford Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) Coalition. 

These investments are spread across ten investment funds, identified as holding shares in Mitie through analysis of their 2024-2025 annual reports. The total value of these funds’ investments in Mitie is £37.6 million, equivalent to over 1.5% of the company’s overall market capitalisation. 

Vanguard FTSE UK All Share Index Trust, which Pembroke uses, invests the largest amount in Mitie at £11.5 million. The BlackRock Smaller Companies fund, used by Christ Church, invests £10.2 million. 

Notably, these figures refer to the overall amount that these funds invest in Mitie, not just the amount from Oxford colleges. Exact estimates of how much individual colleges invested indirectly in Mitie were difficult to obtain, as colleges did not disclose the total amount they held in these funds. 

Other funds used by colleges which hold shares in Mitie are Vanguard’s ESG Screened Developed World Fund, ESG Developed World All Cap Equity Index Fund, Total World Stock ETF, Global Small Cap Index Fund, and Charities UK Equities index; BlackRock’s iShares FTSE 250 Fund; Henderson Smaller Companies; and Legal & General UK Index Trust. 

Mitie and Campsfield IRC 

Mitie Care & Custody Limited (Mitie), a subsidiary of Mitie Group Plc, had previously run the Campsfield IRC from 2011 to its first closure in 2018. In 2025, the Home Office awarded Mitie a £140m contract to operate the centre again, with plans to more than double the facility’s capacity submitted to the Planning Inspectorate. Mitie has also operated the merged Colnbrook and Harmondsworth IRCs since 2014 and the Dungeval IRC in Scotland since 2021. 

Mitie has faced repeated scrutiny over the conditions in Campsfield. In 2011, a detainee committed suicide, and there were repeated mass hunger strikes in protest over living conditions. Another detainee attempted suicide in October 2013, leading to a major fire, after which it transpired that Mitie had not installed sprinklers in the facility at the time. 

Inspectors to the Harmondsworth IRC, another site run by Mitie, reported in July 2024 that the facility contained “the worst conditions they [had] ever seen in immigration detention”, although an independent progress review in July 2025 noted that “substantial improvements” had been made since. 

The Coalition to Close Campsfield (CCC), a group made up of local organisations based in Oxfordshire, including STAR, has campaigned against the reopening of Campsfield and plans for its further expansion. Liz Peretz, an organiser of CCC, told Cherwell that she was “not at all surprised that colleges” are indirectly invested in Mitie. 

“It’s a sound investment for them”, she added. “It’s government money, it’s taxpayers’ money, it’s not going to go away.” However, she told Cherwell that such investments in Mitie were “investing in people’s misery”. 

Lack of transparency 

Of the 32 undergraduate colleges that responded to the FOI requests, Cherwell and STAR could not confirm for 20 colleges whether the investment funds they used included Mitie shares in their portfolio. 

For eleven colleges, at least one of the funds used did not publish information online about holdings, including funds Cambridge Associates, Rathbones Group, Cazenove Capital, Hollyport, and Adams Street Partners. The colleges in this category were Brasenose, Corpus Christi, Harris Manchester, Keble, Mansfield, New, Oriel, St Hugh’s, St Peter’s, Somerville, and Worcester. 

Three colleges – St Anne’s, Trinity, and University – did not provide information on the specific funds through which they invested, although Trinity and University’s could be obtained through the colleges’ annual reports. 

Five colleges – Lincoln, Lady Margaret Hall, Jesus, Oriel, and St Catherine’s – invoked legal protections which made them exempt from disclosing commercially sensitive information in cases where disclosure would constitute a breach of confidence or prejudice their commercial interests. However, Lady Margaret Hall told Cherwell and STAR that four exchange-traded funds (ETFs) made up 22.9% of its investment portfolio. Since Mitie is part of the FTSE 250 Index, the college added that it could have indirect exposure, which it estimated to be no more than “0.09% of its overall investment portfolio, which equates to c.£58k in monetary terms”. As Lady Margaret Hall did not share which funds they used, Cherwell and STAR could not confirm if the college had exposure to Mitie at present or just potential exposure. 

Merton and St Hilda’s confirmed that they do not have any indirect investments in Mitie at present, although Merton noted that it held £4,698.20 in Mitie shares through an investment fund in 2022. Jesus and Magdalen confirmed that they do not invest in any relevant fund, although Magdalen previously invested through Vanguard Total World Stocks ETF. 

Of the nine colleges Cherwell and STAR could confirm indirect investment in Mitie, the level of exposure varied. Exeter, for example, told Cherwell that Mitie’s exposure in the Vanguard ESG Developed World All Cap Equity Index Fund is 0.0036%, meaning the College’s “exposure to Mitie through the tracker is minimal at c.£6”. 

Pembroke, which invests in the Vanguard FTSE UK All Share Index Trust, told Cherwell: “Any investment we have in Mitie is only through indirect legacy passive investment vehicles, and based on the information we have we understand any exposure we do have in Mitie and its subsidiaries would be a negligible part of our overall investments.” St John’s, meanwhile, which invests in the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF as part of its investment portfolio, told Cherwell that “all investments are made and monitored annually” by the college’s responsible investment policy”. 

Ethical investment 

Income from investment makes up a significant portion of Oxford colleges’ revenue. In 2024-2025, Oxford colleges received £448 million from their investments, constituting 60% of their overall incoming resources for that academic year. 

Alongside investment managers, a large portion of the University’s and colleges’ holdings is managed by Oxford University Endowment Management (OUem), a subsidiary of the University which specialises in managing charitable endowments. According to its 2025 report, OUem has more than £7 billion in assets under management, with at least 20 colleges investing through OUem, according to FOI requests by Cherwell and STAR. 

As of 2026, Oxford maintains ethical investment restrictions against companies manufacturing certain types of arms, tobacco companies, fossil fuel exploration and extraction companies, and any funds which invest in any of these types of companies. Following a report by the Ethical Investment Representations Review Subcommittee in July 2025, commissioned by Oxford University Council in May 2024, the University committed to expanding its restrictions to cover more weapon types. However, no equivalent investment restrictions in companies involved in the border industry, such as Mitie, exist. 

In recent years, the University’s investments have been under scrutiny. Work from the Oxford BDS Coalition and Middle East Eye showed that, as of October 2025, the University indirectly invested in at least 49 companies flagged by human rights organisations for their ties to illegal Israeli settlements, with the total value of these holdings coming to £19 million. The coalition could not obtain any data on the value of holdings under OUem due to the company’s lack of response to FOIs. A tribunal in April 2025 upheld OUem’s refusal to disclose the value of its holdings in three companies on the BDS divestment shortlist. 

While the University’s Investment Committee endorsed the EIRRS’s recommendation to work with OUem and the University to enhance investment disclosure, it is unclear what action has been taken by the University. A University spokesperson told Cherwell that the University’s Investment Committee and OUem will be publishing further information on the University’s investments, which “will be available shortly”. 

Further, the University added that, as OUem invests in funds and not individual companies, “there are contractual limits” on what OUem can disclose as company positions. 

Closing Campsfield 

CCC has held demonstrations outside Campsfield IRC on the last Saturday of each month since December 2025, when the centre reopened. The most recent demonstration in May focused on Oxford colleges’ investments in Mitie, as well as the low pay given to detainees in the IRC for cleaning and routine labour. 

Still, members of the CCC campaign remain hopeful about the impact that the University and its colleges could have. Peretz told Cherwell: “The impact could be quite strong, especially if the colleges were prepared to say why they were divesting. 

“[Mitie] likes to have good PR. They like to be seen as wonderful. And this is not a good look for them.” 

Balliol, Christ Church, Hertford, Queen’s, St Edmund Hall, and Wadham were contacted for comment.

The University of Oxford has ranked second behind the University of Cambridge in the  Complete University Guide’s 2027 league table, marking the second consecutive year that Cambridge has claimed the top spot. 

The largest discrepancies between the two institutions were in “quality of research” and “admissions standards”. While Oxford trails Cambridge marginally across several metrics, including graduate prospects and spending on academic services, the most significant gaps were in “research intensity” and “entry standards”. In both categories, Oxford scored 95%, compared to Cambridge’s 100%. 

Meanwhile, Oxford exceeded Cambridge’s score in two more welfare-oriented measures: “student satisfaction” and “student-staff ratio”. Oxford received a student satisfaction score of 80%, compared to Cambridge’s 79%, while Oxford had 9.3 students per academic staff member, compared to Cambridge’s 10.7.

The Complete University Guide rankings are based on data drawn from publicly available sources. Research intensity, for instance, is calculated as “a measure of the proportion of teaching staff involved in research”. Since research intensity is measured only by reference to its relationship to teaching, the Complete University Guide recognises that the measure “can be an underestimate of the actual research intensity”.

“Entry standards” are calculated according to “the average UCAS tariff score of new undergraduate students”, equivalent to the proportion of A’s and A*’s achieved at A level. Oxford’s lower score may therefore reflect its entry requirements, which are, typically, lower than Cambridge’s. Notably, neither interview performance nor admissions tests are factored into the Complete University Guide’s data.

Students at both universities offered differing views on the ranking. Isaac, a second-year engineering student at Cambridge, told Cherwell that Oxford should use the result as motivation to improve its performance relative to leading international universities. However, Archie, a second-year psychology student at Oxford, was more sceptical of league tables, telling Cherwell: “There are loads of different university rankings and they often disagree…. I don’t think it makes sense to put too much stock in all the rankings.”

The University of Oxford was contacted for comment.

Student theatre strives to be as professional as possible, but the annual garden play offers something unique: permission to have fun. In Trinity Term, as students pivot between the library and Examination Schools, another ritual takes over college quads. Outdoor productions appear across the city, transforming lawns and gardens into temporary stages. For director and producer Magdalena Lacey-Hughes, these productions represent something increasingly rare in Oxford drama: the freedom to be creative without the pressure of being perfect. 

Garden plays are as much a part of Oxford life as exams when the academic year draws to a close. After watching the Queen’s College garden play’s performance of Guys & Dolls on its closing night, I met with its director, Lacey-Hughes, expecting to discuss the challenges of outdoor theatre. Instead, our conversation turned to a bigger question: why does Oxford drama take itself so seriously? 

After arriving at Oxford eager to throw herself into student theatre, Lacey-Hughes found the Oxford drama scene surprisingly difficult to navigate. “I never really got my foot in the door until Trinity of first-year,” where she choreographed Fiddler on the Roof, the Queen’s garden play that year. “I think I just really didn’t understand how student drama worked here. It was very confusing because it is super decentralised.” It was through subsequent productions inspired by this one that Lacey-Hughes met George Robson, and the pair collaborated to launch Crazy Child Productions in Michaelmas.  

Though her passion for the innumerable opportunities offered by Oxford’s extensive drama scene is tangible when she talks about her projects, she is candid about the anxiety which surrounds the field. Students are deeply invested in producing high-quality work, but that ambition can create its own culture: feedback from Oxbridge Onstage last term noted that “Oxford’s drama is very serious and often quite dark.”

For Lacey-Hughes, part of the issue lies in Oxford’s fixation with professionalism. “I think it comes with the slight pretentious air that everything here has,” she reflects. “There is this real emphasis on putting on plays that have huge legacies so that they can reinterpret themselves.” Over the past year, she has noticed the same impulse when people discuss production companies. “People ask ‘what do you do?’ and you would respond ‘we try to make student drama as professional as possible’. In reality, that is not achievable.”

It’s rather ironic here as Lacey-Hughes is hardly arguing from the sidelines: Guys & Dolls operated on a budget comparable to some Oxford Playhouse productions, complete with a live orchestra and professional technical support. Yet what stood out most was not the scale of the production but its atmosphere, as audience members were pulled onstage, handed props, heckled, and encouraged to become part of the performance. The result was collective enjoyment shared by the case and audience alike. 

She attributes her talent for generating fun to her own experience and familiarity with different aspects of productions. “You want to expect a lot from people, but you also have to respect that they have a lot to do alongside rehearsals.” Cast members balanced the production with choirs, rowing, journalism, and exams. Drawing on her role as Welfare Officer for Oxford University Drama Society (OUDS), she believes that “respecting time and making people feel valued in the space is very important.”

What, then, prevents student theatre from embracing that same sense of playfulness? For Lacey-Hughes, the problem is a culture: “I do think that there is a slight lack of understanding and appreciation for things that are just inherently creative.” Looking at the prevalence of tragedies and dramatic reinterpretations of established classics, she argues that Oxford often mistakes seriousness for artistic value. “We think things are only impressive when people are able to cry onstage,” she says, “rather than when they are able to make you laugh.”

Part of this seriousness stems from the structure of Oxford drama itself. For newcomers, success is often less dependent on talent or funding than understanding an unusually decentralised system. Pressure mounts when there is, in fact, a ‘right way’ to produce student drama. “It’s very confusing – you have to know it to be a part of it,” Lacey-Hughes explains. Production companies sit at the centre of that system. Prior to each term they bid for venues, apply for funding, and build reputations over time. The official OUDS advice makes one thing clear: without a Student Production Company, you cannot apply for funding. In theory, anyone can establish one, but the reality is that the necessary experience, contacts, and institutional knowledge often accumulate within established groups, making it easier for some productions to succeed over others. 

It is partly this culture which inspired Crazy Child Productions, the company that Lacey-Hughes runs alongside George Robson.  Far from the rigidity of other production companies, their company is characterised by an intention rather than a theme. “We are just kind of doing everything really,” she laughs. Their productions range from canonical student dramas such as The Glass Menagerie to student-written and translated work. Lacey-Hughes grins as she tells me about a recent production, Stories From an Abandoned Warehouse, “it was actually the first time Stories has ever been staged in the UK.”

Reflecting on their company’s purpose, she emphasises accessibility: Crazy Child Productions work with students who want to stage a single project without building an entire production company around it. Recent productions have included “some friends who wanted to do one thing and not set up a whole production company,” while Stories was organised by a postgraduate student who did not have the time to establish a whole brand. “We don’t intend to take it out of Oxford,” she says. “We want people to use it and the resources which we have built up.”

The playful nature of garden plays offer escape from these pressures of Oxford theatre. “The pressure is off a bit more,” Lacey-Hughes believes. Freed from some of the expectations attached to studio-based productions, gardens provide space for experimentation: earlier this term, Lady Margaret Hall hosted an unrehearsed performance of Twelfth Night, while St Edmund Hall staged The Harrowing of Hell.26 in a crypt. 

The freedom of garden plays stems partly from their refusal to behave like conventional theatre. “You aren’t going to feel as immersed when it is seven o’clock outside, the sun is setting, there’s a bird over there and you can hear the ambulance on the road.” Rather than undermining the experience, she believes these interruptions create a different relationship between audience and performance. “It is a whole different type of world-building,” she explains, “because the immersion is pretty much shattered.”

That freedom comes at a cost. Outdoor productions are technically demanding. Lacey-Hughes explains the difficulties of hiring an external professional in sound design while the weather itself became a concern. “On the first night our orchestra tent was breaking due to the rain,” she recalls. Such a small team meant that “a lot of that fell to me; I was holding up the tent for around two hours on the Wednesday.”

College regulations can limit staging decisions as well, particularly around audience movement and health-and-safety policies. Yet Lacey-Hughes maintains that these restrictions often produce better creative solutions. “One thing I changed this year was bringing the orchestra into view. I wanted them to be there, and it worked for the show itself having them be appreciated.”

“In some ways, you are allowed more creativity because you have a completely different space to work with, but also colleges are much stricter.” In Guys & Dolls, Queen’s itself becomes part of the performance. “The window is a feature each year – it is the thing to look out for,” she says. This year, she reorientated the stage so that the window was on display the whole time; when actors were not using it as part of the set, residents were using it as, well, a window. “Initially I was annoyed,” she laughs. “Then I was like, ‘fine’. We should have started charging them for a ticket.”

The same elements which make garden plays less immersive also make them creatively exciting. “Even a black-box theatre is limited in certain ways,” she argues. “That is what makes creativity really powerful, when you use it well and when you have limitations. You cannot be creative when you have all the opportunities available to you.”

Perfectionism and professionalism are factoring pressures in student societies beyond theatre. In an urge to create portfolios and eagerness to enter industries immediately upon graduation, the rush to seem accomplished appears to overshadow the earnest and crucial learning experience of student societies. In a busy Michaelmas ahead, Crazy Child Productions does not seem to be slowing down: they are bidding for the Oxford Playhouse an O’Reilly show as you read, meanwhile two first-year students have already booked the Burton Taylor Studio. So what do they want their production company to be known for, for their audiences to take away? After a moment’s consideration, Lacey-Hughes responds, “‘You can’t be everything before your time’ is a really cringe answer, but that is definitely part of it.”