13 MARCH 1964, Page 13

ik on Letters Dealing With Oxbridge Iris Murdoch,

R. A. Leigh, R. I. Moore

A Future for the Cinema A. R. Wolfe The Riddle of Dallas

Richard Gombrich and Martin Gilbert

Blank Holidays Douglas W. Franklin A Spectator at Cambridge Dokglas French The Psyche Unchained Robert GitItngs Sex in Oxford Bernard Miles Opus Del Hugh O'Shaughnessv

DEALING WITH OXBRIDGE SIR.—Your recent leading article under the menacing title 'Dealing with Oxbridge.' in which you suggest that Oxford and Cambridge should be turned into post-graduate universities, seemed to me a bit con- fused.

Let us separate a number of different, though re- lated, problems: (a) the method of entry into Oxford and Cambridge. (b) the relation of under- graduate to post-graduate studies, (c) the general future of Oxford and Cambridge. As far as (a) is concerned it is essential to see to it that all who have the ability and the will to enter the older universities should have a fair chance to do so. This problem, which is largely one of public re- lations, is soluble and the situation is improving. Question (b) is more complicated. Your leader- writer says that we must welcome developments in pest-graduate studies because a three-year course may be inadequate and because we need scientists and social scientists and university teachers. This is true. But it should also be remembered that, in the arts, university work is for the vast majority undergraduate work, and rightly so. I imagine we would not wish to develop in this country an edu- cational machine in which undergraduate work is preliminary exploration and only graduate studies are rigorous. Such an arrangement is not only expensive but, in my view, inefficient. University education should largely consist of giving really tough teaching to students between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Of course post-graduate teaching must be extended too, for the reasons mentioned, and for others, such as that cultivated persons may wish to continue their education. All right. Now what about question (c)? Your leader surprisingly says that 'of the many things peculiar to Oxford and Cambridge, tradition of under- graduate teaching is hardly the first that comes to mind.' It seems to me that it is just about 'the first thing that comes to mind. The colleges are special- ised machines designed to deal with the problem of undergraduate teaching—too exclusively so de- signed, many overworked college tutors may think. If undergraduate teaching is important, then Oxford and Cambridge, where this is done more inten- sively and on the whole by cleverer people, are important too. Your leader goes on to speak of 'Oxbridge financed by the State to provide all the old privileges of the public school.' But if question (a) can be properly dealt with, the privileges of the older universities will be innocuous ones. Or does your leader wish to argue that no university should be markedly pre-eminent? This would be both an unrealistic and a dangerous argu- ment. Oxford and Cambridge, for all their faults,

do embody the highest standards of intellectual excellence. There is a danger now, especially in arts

subjects; that a just plea for democracy may turn

into an attack on high standards of scholarship. These high standards exist in Oxford and Cambridge,

and elsewhere, too, of course, but since some uni- versities must and should be the first there seems no reason why these should not go on being the first. To attempt, as your leader suggests, to turn them into post-graduate schools would in effect destroy all their existing working arrangements and deprive the country of its best undergraduate teaching machine, to produce instead an institute of advanced study with, inevitably, an emphasis upon science. Doubtless such institutes should exist and doubtless undergraduate teaching should be organ- ised so as to, allow more time for research. But given that, for financial reasons, we cannot have all that we want but only perhaps the first things, it seems to me that really good universities for undergraduates are of the highest importance and that we should not lightly consider destroying those that we 'have.

Steeple Aston, Oxford

IRIS MURDOCH