Ethnic minority students to benefit from businessman's donation to Cambridge University

ETHNIC minority students are set to benefit from a generous donation from billionaire financier David Harding.

Harding, a physics graduate from Cambridge who became a successful hedge fund manager, has announced a gift of £100 million, out of which £1 million will help fund Cambridge’s access programmes aimed at attracting disadvantaged students and those from  minority ethnic backgrounds.

The donations from the David and Claudia Harding Foundation will include £79 million in scholarships and aid to postgraduate PhD students and £20 million as financial support for undergraduates.

“This extraordinarily generous gift from David and Claudia Harding will be invaluable in sustaining Cambridge’s place among the world’s leading universities and will help to transform our offer to students,” Stephen Toope, Cambridge’s vice-chancellor, was quoted as saying by the Guardian.

The fund for postgraduate students will be known as the Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholars Programme and it will begin this year. Under the programme, more than 100 doctoral students in residence will be funded at any one time, Cambridge said.

“Scholarships will be available to the most talented students for research in any discipline and the successful candidates will be offered places at applicable Cambridge colleges,” the university said in a statement.

Harding graduated from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, with a first-class degree in 1982 before working in London as a stock broker. The 57-year-old founded the Winton Group in 1997 and he remains its chief executive.

Harding said: “Claudia and I are very happy to make this gift to Cambridge to help to attract future generations of the world’s outstanding students to research and study there.

“Cambridge and other British centres of learning have down the ages contributed greatly to improvements in the human condition and can continue in future to address humanity’s great challenges.”