Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Oxford University is about to find out what a Yale man is worth.

Andrew D. Hamilton, 56, a former Yale University provost, will be installed today as Oxford’s next leader to bring a U.S. approach to fundraising to the English institution that is more than 900 years old.

A chemist by training, Hamilton will be installed as the school’s 271st vice-chancellor, the equivalent of a U.S. college president. He is the first Oxford leader who neither attended nor taught at the university.

A native of the U.K. who worked in the U.S. since 1981, Hamilton was provost, the chief academic officer, of Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, from 2004 through 2008. Faculty at the British school see Hamilton’s hire as an effort to improve Oxford’s finances as it competes with Harvard University, Yale and the rest of the eight private Ivy League schools in the U.S., said Chris McKenna, who teaches business history and strategy at the Said Business School at Oxford.

“There is a lot of comparison in the British system with the Ivy Leagues because they seem to be our immediate rivals,” McKenna said. “Hamilton is seen as someone who can make us competitive with them, who can bring us the best of that system while maintaining the best of this system.”

Oxford began a fundraising campaign in May 2008 with a goal of a minimum of 1.25 billion pounds ($1.99 billion) the largest fundraising campaign in European university history, according to Oxford officials. The campaign has so far raised 195 million pounds.

‘It’s Expensive’

“The campaign has a lot of momentum, and it is fair to say that the university wanted someone to carry on that momentum and build on it,” said an Oxford University source.

At a ceremony today in the Sheldonian Theatre marking the changeover of vice-chancellors, Hamilton said that Oxford’s “commitment to excellent comes at a price.”

“It is expensive,” he said in his remarks. “It demands high standards and constant attention. It is not always.”

Oxford was fourth among the world’s top 200 universities in 2008 in a ranking compiled by QS World University Rankings and Times Higher Education magazine, trailing Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Yale and the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

Six Kings, 12 Saints

Oxford, made up of 38 quasi-independent colleges with about 20,000 total students, is the oldest university in the English- speaking world, with a history that dates to at least 1096, according to the school’s Web site. It has educated at least six kings, 12 saints and 25 U.K. prime ministers, the school said. Hamilton succeeds John Hood, a New Zealand native who is leaving after five years in office.

One of Hamilton’s goals is to raise money to fund scholarships so that talented students are not turned away from Oxford because of their inability to pay, he told the Guardian, a U.K. newspaper.

“The years ahead will not be easy for Oxford,” Hamilton said in his speech today. “They will likely require an intense debate on the role of the university, its financial underpinnings and its relationship to the rest of the national and international world.”

Hamilton taught at Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, and the University of Pittsburgh, where he became a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, before coming to Yale in 1997. He said in an interview with the Oxford Times, a local British newspaper, that he isn’t interested in recreating an Ivy League-style school and will preserve Oxford’s college system.

“Harvard, Yale and Princeton are all trying to recreate the magnificent learning environment that a college system creates,” Hamilton said. “The collegiate system is the jewel in Oxford’s glittering crown. It is what makes Oxford a remarkably special place in higher education.”

Cambridge Campaign

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Hamilton is the second high-ranking Yale administrator to be tapped to run a leading British university.

Alison Richard, 61, who was Yale’s provost from 1994 to 2002, was named the vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge in October, 2003. She started a campaign to raise 1 billion pounds ($1.59 billion) and hired Cambridge’s first chief investment officer. Members of Oxford’s search committee took notice of her success, said Richard Levin, Yale’s president who attended Oxford.

“Those involved in the search for the vice-chancellor were keenly aware of Alison Richard’s contributions at Cambridge,” Levin, 62, said. “We at Yale are flattered that they went looking to the source from whence she came.”

Yale’s Leaders

Other former Yale officials to lead schools in the U.S. include Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a former Yale provost; Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University, who was dean of Yale College; Kim Bottomly, president of Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, who was deputy provost; and Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Oxford’s endowment was valued at $945 million as of October 2008, according to its Web site. The endowments held by the university’s colleges, which are managed independently, totaled about $4.14 billion, the school said.

Harvard, which has the biggest endowment in education, has a fund valued at $26 billion on June 30. Yale’s endowment is $16.3 billion.

Any improvements Hamilton can bring to Oxford’s ability to raise money will be welcomed, said Lee Elliott Major, research director of Sutton Trust, a London-based nonprofit that works to improve access to U.K. universities. Oxford is overly dependent on state support, he said.

Good News

“U.K. universities could do far more in terms of fundraising and alumni giving,” Elliott Major said. “Places like Oxford, they are competing on a global stage so they have to look at what their competitors are doing. They have to diversify their income streams to survive.”

Boosting fundraising is good news to James Dray, 27, a graduate student in politics who is president of the Oxford Union, a university debating society founded in 1823.

“The biggest problem facing the university is access, so anything he can bring in terms of helping access would be incredibly important,” Dray said. “There is a problem getting people from ethnic backgrounds and poorer backgrounds.”

Hamilton is an organic chemist, whose work involved synthesizing new molecules which may be able to help prevent diseases. Hamilton continued his research while provost at Yale and hopes to continue while at Oxford, said John Tully, a Yale chemistry professor who is friends with Hamilton.

American Football

“He has an amazing ability to be working on a lot of things at the same time,” Tully said. “He did it effectively while he was provost and his research group was quite strong.”

Hamilton was born in Guildford, a town south of London. He studied at the University of Exeter, in southwest England, and the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, before earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at Cambridge.

A soccer and tennis player, Hamilton became a fan of American football while in Pittsburgh, Tully said. When the Steelers played in the Super Bowl in February, Hamilton hosted Tully and his wife to watch the game. His cheerful nature dispelled some of the stereotypes associated with the English, Tully said.

“He’s not stuffy at all,” Tully said. “He always seemed upbeat and happy.”

Tully said that at Oxford, Hamilton will no longer have one of the advantages that he had in New Haven.

British Accent

“At Yale, his British accent sounded distinguished,” Tully said. “That won’t be the case at Oxford, where everyone has one.”

In his talk today, Hamilton made reference to Yale’s finest students who studied at Oxford and vice versa, noting that Yale former President Kingman Brewster moved to Oxford in 1981 to become Master of University College and that current Yale President Levin studied at Oxford’s Merton College.

Pointing out that Yale’s founding gift was intended for Oxford but was purloined, Hamilton said,“I may have found a way for us to meet some of the financial challenges that lie ahead of us: we should demand our money back, with interest.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at ostaley@bloomberg.netCaroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 6, 2009 11:02 EDT