What does "don" mean here?

If it means a teacher at a university or college (especially at Cambridge or Oxford), how could the teacher have the power to offer place in colleges?

Context:
In recent years, Britain has been afflicted with one scandal after another, and these have been widely publicised by media everywhere.

These scandals have far-reaching consequences for its once much-admired public institutions. They reflected the falling standards in education, postal, transport, health care and social welfare services, to name a few key areas.

Education is a clear example. Reduced government subsidies have led to the deliberate lowering of admission standards and easier attainment of degrees in some universities aimed at attracting more students.

To bolster the funding of an ancient university, a don there offered college places to offsprings of substantial donors who would not otherwise be eligible for admission.

Most recently, the A-Level examination marking debacle affecting hundreds of thousands of students shocked the nation.

British hospitals face an acute shortage of doctors and nurses. Numerous patients with life-threatening ailments, perforce, have to wait a long time before being treated. Some subsidised patients have been sent abroad for operations in order to alleviate this problem.

Staff negligence at its hospitals costs thousands of lives annually.

Brain drain of its elites is becoming serious, as many have emigrated elsewhere for a better future. More will follow suit, unless effective solutions are found soon.