Cambridge must choose a chancellor who enhances its reputation without politicising or making a mockery of the role, and Lord Browne is emerging as the most credible candidate to do so, says Eliot Wilson

Our leaders like to speak of the United Kingdom “punching above its weight”. For at least 80 years, it has been a way for Britain to adjust to its loss of global standing, and it is frequently self-deluding nonsense. But it is impressively true in the upper ranks of higher education.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are not just world-class but often world-beating: of how many other British institutions can that be said? This year’s Times Higher Education World University Rankings but Oxford at the top of the tree, and Cambridge was ranked fifth. While both institutions are wealthy, their endowments do not match those of the company they keep so far up the global list: MIT, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford are all many times richer but cannot quite vanquish their much older cousins.

Each of England’s ancient universities is formally headed by a chancellor. Although executive power now rests with the vice-chancellors, the university administrations and the colleges, it is not........

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