Fewer means better
Something like half a million students decided to boycott their lectures on Wednesday of this week. The nation will be none the worse off for that, and the incident might well pass unremarked were it not for the increasing extent of students to take themselves, as a class, seriously. The National Union of Students has a great tendency to behave like a trade union. It has a general secretary. It has an annual conference, with delegates. It passes pompous resolutions. It talks about going on stnke. It is characteristic of students to take themselves seriously, and there can be no objection to this aspect of their activity except from intelligent students. What is objectionable, however, is that other people, grown men, nowadays also take them seriously, even when they are playing at being trade unionists.
Possibly the present level of student grants is insufficient to maintain the students in the manner to which they feel entitled. But there is no national shortage of people wanting to be students; nor do students find it impossible to drink, smoke, eat and buy gramophone records. It is true that many of them are reluctant to buy books, but there is little reason to suppose that an increase in their grants would be accompanied either by an increase in their purchase of written material, or by greater intellectual effort. There may be a case for increasing the grants of students who do well. Scholarships and other awards used to have the effect of rewarding merit. A system of grants whereby those who got second class placings received more than the third class people and less than those placed in the first class could have a useful effect on student performance. Undergraduate and post-graduate students whose work drops below the required national level should automatically have their grants cut off and be required to leave. There are too many students. Fewer students would mean better students, and would also make it possible for better grants to be paid.
The state education system is free' up to university level; it should either be free throughout or, better — since a university education confers cash benefits on those who receive it and also provides students with three or more comparatively idle and carefree years — it should be paid for by the students themselves out of their future enhanced earnings. A compromise system might be best, with students receiving a basic loan, to be repaid much like a mortgage, with grants in addition, based entirely on merit and performance. The amount of work done by a student, and his ability, are easy to measure, which may well be why many students now demand an end to the examination system. Meanwhile, students do themselves no good at all by boycotting lectures and talking foolishly of strikes.
