Cambridge richest UK university

Cambridge has emerged as the richest UK university with 4 billion pounds worth of assets, even eclipsing Monaco, the wealthiest country in the world.

Cambridge University was yesterday revealed as one of the richest places in the world, claiming total assets of 4 billion pounds, more than double the combined value of every other university in the country, excluding Oxford.

The staggering wealth values the university, with a staff and student population population of 30,000, at more than 130,000 pounds per head, the Daily Mail reported citing the University's annual report.

It also surpasses Monaco, the richest country in the world, which was most recently calculated to have a GDP per capita of 108,409 pounds.

The figure dwarfs second-placed Oxford, which has a value of 3.3 billion pounds. Only super-rich US universities, such as Harvard, claim of deeper pockets than Cambridge.

The wealth gap figures attracted fresh criticisms of elitism at the university. There were also claims that little had been done to combat an ethnic imbalance among its population.

The enormous wealth is attributed to building assets and land ownership accumulated over the university's 800-year history. This has been generously topped up by its high-achieving alumni, who have gone on to make huge personal fortunes.

In 2000 the university received a 132 million pound donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the single largest donation to a UK university ever made.

The Cambridge University annual report also highlighted the discrepancies over ethnicity, with 65.8% of staff being white British. A further 24.6% referred to themselves as white 'other'. Out of the massive 9,147 staff just 45 are listed as black African or black Caribbean.

The largest represented ethnic minority was Chinese with 3%, followed by Indian, which made up 2%.

There is also a whopping gender divide with 75% of all academic staff male and 60% of assistants female.

Professor Malcolm Longair, director of research at the university's Cavendish Laboratory said that it was a problem "everybody recognises" and the University was doing its utmost to promote female academics.