Oxbridge colleges used to live off the farms they owned - now they are not quite betting the farm, but they are getting more adventurous.

St Hilda's College, Oxford, has emerged as an investor in an online poker company that was floated on the London Stock Exchange in June. As shares in Party Gaming jumped from 116p to 147.5p on the first day, the university's last women-only college should have made a good return on its stake.

Not everyone approves, however. The National Union of Students is worried that online gambling will tempt poor students and points out that young women account for a third of online poker players.

The college said selection of shares is left to its asset managers and told the Times Higher Education Supplement today: "The college has a socially responsible investment policy that was agreed by the fellows of the college after discussion with student representatives."

Meanwhile, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, Alison Richard, said last month that the university should be more enterprising in its investment policy along the lines of American universities. She is poised to launch an international fundraising drive to boost Cambridge's £3bn endowments and believes donors will want to know that the university is doing its best to sweat its investments.

Last year American colleges reported average returns of 18% on their investments, the highest since 1998. In contrast, real-term returns for Cambridge have averaged about 5% over the past 10 years.

But there is a downside to the American way, which can be summed up in one word: Enron.

This week the University of California celebrated a $2.4bn settlement with a Canadian bank as part of a complex series of lawsuits arising from the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation.

The university lost $145m as a result of the Enron scandal, and is acting as lead plaintiff in the lawsuits because of its size, resources and stake in the outcome. As the health warnings on insurance ads say, the value of investments can go down as well as up.