Oxford sets up £300m scholarship fund Oxford University is setting up a £300m scholarship fund for young people from low-income families - Europe's biggest single philanthropic push solely designed to open up higher education to young people from any background. Michael Moritz, chairman of Sequoia Capital, and Harriet Heyman, his novelist wife, are seeding the fund with a pledge of £75m. The Moritz-Heyman Scholarship Programme will support its first 100 students from October. Andrew Hamilton, vice-chancellor, said the "remarkable and hugely generous gift" would help the university "go an important stage further towards our goal of ensuring that all barriers - real or perceived - are removed from students" choices." The programme will take effect just as university reforms will mean tuition fees will dramatically increase at many universities - including Oxford - from £3,375 to £9,000 a year. The Moritz-Heyman Scholars will pay only £3,500. The scholars will also get a £5,500 bursary. They will also be eligible for a £3,250 government grant. Together with a student loan from the government with which to pay the fee, these sums are intended to cover all of their expenses. The university eventually intends to fund all students from families earning less than £16,000 a year this way: there are currently 280 such students in each cohort. Mr Moritz said: "I wouldn't be here today were it not for the generosity of strangers." Mr Moritz, who studied at Oxford in the 1970s and previously gave $50m to Christ Church, the college he attended, said: "My father was plucked as a teenager from Nazi Germany and was able to attend a very good school ... entirely on scholarship. And went on, entirely thanks to scholarships, to study at Oxford. Like other elite institutions, Oxford is socially exclusive: in 2010-11 45 per cent of its new undergraduates were from private schools. The university runs summer schools and outreach programmes to attract applicants from poorer backgrounds. A Financial Times investigation found that the largest factors in driving this exclusivity was the weak performance of state schools serving deprived areas and the reluctance of those poorer pupils who attain good grades to apply for the university. Mr Moritz said: "Our new scholarship programme means that a gifted student - irrespective of financial circumstances - will always be 100 per cent confident they can study at Oxford." Mr Moritz and Ms Heyman are donating the first £25m, which will be matched by £25m from the university. Donors will then be challenged to contribute a further £50m. The couple will then release a further two tranches on the same basis. Students from the target income group who do not qualify for a Moritz-Heyman scholarship in the first years will receive the university's existing package, worth £22,000 over three years. The Moritz-Heyman scholarship will be worth £33,000. Prior to this pledge, Oxford had £3.8bn of investment assets - second in the UK only to Cambridge's £4.5bn. It would be the 15th best endowed in North America, lying between Duke and Notre Dame. Third-placed Edinburgh holds about £250m.