Laura Spence: Rejected by Magdalen College

Dr Stevens, 66, who will retire in April, said his decision had been made before the current uproar over admissions started.

But the American citizen, who was a professor at Yale for 20 years before becoming Master of Pembroke eight years ago, said he was angry at the government's hostility against Oxford.

'Top-up fees'

And he said he found recent comments that Oxford should be like Harvard and Yale "very strange".

"Harvard is very rich, while Oxford is very poor," he said.

"Unless there is a massive infusion of money either from the government or from the private sector, or from parents and students, England cannot afford to have universities that compete with Harvard and Yale."

Oxford is part of a group of the UK's most prestigious universities - the Russell Group - which is considering proposals that students at the most successful institutions should pay additional "top-up" fees.

But the government is against the idea, and the Education Secretary, David Blunkett, recently told delegates at the Association of University Teachers' conference that he would never accept a top-up fees system which allowed universities to set their own level of fees.

'Wonderful job

Dr Stevens said Harvard charged its students more than �20,000 a year, but 70% of them were on some kind of scholarship.

"We have to think of doing radical things like this," he said.

Other ideas, such as colleges hyphenating their names with those of benefactors if they donated huge amounts of money should also be considered.

"People are terribly shocked by that, but over the centuries many colleges were named after benefactors."

Dr Stevens said that case of Laura Spence had been "used" by the government.

"Oxford under its Vice-Chancellor has done a wonderful job of recruiting state school students," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education rejected Dr Stevens' claim that it had cut Oxford's teaching and research funding.

She said the university's research grant for the coming academic year was �63.8m, an increase of 17.5% on the 1997/98 figure.