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Cambridge colleges are the home, social hub and workplace of the students who live in them, but outside of term time they are hired out as conference venues, housing anything from board meetings to weddings. Yet are colleges increasingly being forced to rely upon income from hiring themselves out as conference venues due to the hostile financial environment in which they operate?

Cambridge is the wealthiest university in the UK, with an estimated endowment of £4 billion in 2010, with £3 billion of that linked directly to the colleges themselves.

Despite this, the 2010 accounts of Downing College, which had almost 20% of its gross income provided by conferences last year, cite the need for the conference income to offset the year-round costs of running the college due to "the unfavourable business environment within which Oxbridge colleges operate".

The revenue generated from conferences is a key part of the commercial business side of college finances, needed due to the cost of running the estate and staff of colleges outside of term time.

Yet not every college relies equally heavily upon conference income. In 2010 St John’s College, one of the richest in the university, received only just under 4% of its gross income for the year from conference revenue, with Christ’s College even less at only 1.62% of its gross income, whilst Churchill College received almost 50% of its gross income from the money generated by conferences.

Churchill College is the home of the Møller Centre, which according to its website is the “only dedicated conference centre in Cambridge”, and a spokesperson for the college explained that whilst the conference centre and the college itself operate quite independently of each other “their combined purpose is to provide revenue to support the core work of the College - namely education and research.”

She went on to note that “Moreover, many of the events which take place in College relate to science, medicine, and technology which are core areas of interest for the College.”

But is this focus on business revenue adversely affecting students at Cambridge? Largely the answer appears to be no. As the conferences take place largely during the holidays the only inconvenience they cause to students is the need for a swift turnaround of rooms at the end of term.

Mike Whetnall, a Second Year Classicist at Downing College told Varsity that “general student life goes on more or less unaffected”, going on to say that “I know a few people were kicked out of their rooms almost immediately at the end of term, which must have been really annoying, but it doesn't disturb everyone and even when it does, it's not a major issue.”

Cambridge colleges operate in a business environment that means they have to generate income from sources other than the money paid by the students of the university and the money given by the university from government funding. The hiring out of the colleges as conference venues is an attempt to solve this issue, and one set to become ever more common.