It’s easy to proclaim principles at work, but they can be much more difficult to apply in practice. Let me explain how different principles have come to clash at the college that I chair.

I am hosting a dinner this evening for three senior managers who have been with the college for many years, carrying out really good work. As governors, we have worked closely with them and want to say “thank you” in the traditional way, with a nice dinner. We have always invited all governors and all members of the senior management team, and commonly the retiring colleague’s spouse. The college has always paid and the bill is typically around £1,000, a relatively small sum to a college with a turnover of £55 million.

I’ve always thought it was justified for the college to pay because these are well-regarded colleagues whom we rightly want to thank, following the principle that we value our staff. It’s easy to say that they are paid well and that should be enough – but no HR professional would take that view.

I’ve also always seen these evenings as a valuable opportunity for governors and senior managers to relax and get to know each other better without a formal agenda in front of us. There are real business benefits.

I’m also conscious that every college governor is a volunteer and wholly unpaid. As a matter of principle, it seems that volunteer governors should at least not lose money from making their contribution to the college. This is my view not least because if a potential governor thought that participation might cost them money, we would find it harder to recruit people outside a relatively small group of better-off people with the time and financial resources to take on these roles. If governors had to pay for attending a dinner such as this, that’s another principle challenged.

We are, however, public servants, and the proper allocation of funds by public servants is very much in the news, whether it’s MPs’ expenses or, this week, the extent to which the full remuneration of chief police officers should be made public. Practices that have been accepted for years are no longer accepted, so we’ve asked ourselves whether it is still right for the college to pay for the dinner. Although some are getting weary of the storyline, there are important underlying principles about openness with public funds and getting priorities right.

This last point matters a great deal to us because we are a college: our new principal is challenging us to commit to the ideal of “learner first”. She’s right, of course, but if that principle means anything, it means that we should not be spending £1,000 on a dinner while also, like every other college, making deep cuts in our budget, some of which inevitably reduce chances for students – however hard we try.

Inevitably, we’ve had to compromise on some of these principles – which isn’t exactly what one’s meant to do with principles. Governors and non-retiring senior colleagues are paying for their own and their guests’ dinners this evening – though, without a conscious decision on anyone’s part, we’ve ended up with no additional guests this time. While I have no doubt that we’ll have a good evening and give our colleagues a good send-off, I worry that we’ve lost something.

The great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith drew attention to what he called the paradox of “private affluence amid public squalor”. Our dinner will most certainly not be squalid, but it’s interesting that the principles that have buckled first under pressure are those that value our people, both staff and governors. Is that right?