GRADUATES AND MONEY-GETTING.
ALARGE proportion of the Entrance Examinations for the English Universities are fixed for next month, and, in thousands of middle-class households the controversy whether University education helps young men on in life must again be raging. That controversy is as old as modern society, and of late it has taken a sharper, though more restricted form. Men. do not now argue whether culture is good, but argue harder than ever whether it pays. On the general value of wide education, opinion is, we think, much more nearly unanimous than it was forty years ago. The Universities themselves have improved more than any corporations in the country, while men have grown ,wider and more tolerant, have ceased to expect miracles from education, and have learned, to a degree which to our grandfathers would have seemed unintelligible, to distrust the strengthening effect of ignorance. Time was, and not so long ago, when even the cultivated doubted whether " scholars " were ever quite fitted for the practical work of life, just as time was, and not so long ago, when Generals and Admirals held that educated soldiers and. sailors were sure to run away. We have ourselves in a long-past time heard an Admiral express that idea in the plainest English, and he took the inevitable ques- tion,—" Whether, then, officers always ran away P" in decidedly ill part. All that has passed away, as has the idea that the Universities are " nests " of this or the other baleful opinion, and its corollary, that they are so much more for full of " temp- tation " than any other place in which grown lads are congregated together. Those who think culture important have, we think, come to the conclusion that to those to whom it can be given—who are only a proportion of our youth, gilded or otherwise—the Universities give it most easily, and in fullest measure. They do not give very much, but as we said, men are recognising limitations more clearly than of old, and are satisfied that they give more than any other easily attainable instrumen- teaks. For those who are content with culture, then—that is, all the rich, eccentrics excepted, and a great many more—the question is settled, and they send their sons to Oxford or Cam- bridge, as they send them to their tailors, as part of their un- avoidable destiny, often making for the purpose almost incon- ceivable sacrifices. Among the Clergy, more especially, and among many of the poorer professionals, the effort made to secure " College " for the sons is often severe, the family submitting to privations for years, or incurring humiliating obligations, or sacrificing the whole of the little capital which forms the mother's only insurance against want. When challenged on the subject, they plead their duty to their children with the strongest convictions and if for any cause they fail in it, they feel something which is much more nearly remorse than regret.
Those who place culture before all things are, however, by no means a majority. A much larger number of those who con- template " College " as one alternative for their boys regard efficiency in life as quite as valuable as culture, and are inclined to doubt whether all the advantages of University training are not counterbalanced by the necessary loss of ex- perience gained at a time when the mind can be made to take a definite "ply." The Dar and the Church absorb very few lads now, compared with the total number of the educated, and, except when they have decided on the woolsack or the mitre, fathers of families are still divided, and, indeed, in an immense number of eases dubious, as to their best course. They like the Universities, but they recognise success in life, or it may be the actual getting of bread, as far preferable to any amount of mental cultivation, or, indeed, as absolutely indis- pensable. They seek advice, and they do not get it. In all the immense and ramified branches of occupation known as commerce, trade, banking, engineering, agriculture, India, the Colonies, and " literature " in its money-getting sense, the experts are seriously at variance. We should say, though of course we may be attaching too much importance to the experience of a few men, that at least one-third of such experts consider a University education a dear and decided drawback, —a source of unfitness, instead of fitness—and that this third contains a good many persons themselves men of unusual and varied culture. They say that the Universities produce dislike for hard life, and in this dislike is an ultimate and an incurable cause of ill-success. Another third, though less hostile, consider the University career "no good," except to give manners ; and hold that the money and time, though not exactly wasted, are expended to secure a problematical gain, in the way not so much of successor of happiness, as of grade. These men are seldom thoroughly cultivated, but greatly exaggerate the effect of University culture upon grade, perhaps of all errors about the system the one most generally prevalent. Of the remaining third, a large proportion maintain strongly and definitely that the higher education always "pays ;" that no matter what a man's occupation may be, he will always, if willing, pursue it more successfully as a man with a degree. He may not be willing, but if he is willing, he will always, as they say, be more efficient, better able to give and take, more persistent, more sensible of duty to the work itself, and above all, better able to manage men, that first secret of fortune in almost all depart- ments of life. The graduates, they declare, even if they keep shops, or supervise building yards, or manage ranches in Colorado, always try for the biggest things, and see fa s better than merely experienced men, to what:their work may lead, and what is the most reasonably probable road to success. More- over, argue these men, descending into slang, the graduates afloat in the hard work of life "do not go muckers " in any- thing like the same proportion, do not, when they fail, go under so hopelessly, or take to drink or disreputable courses so often. They are supposed to do so, because when they do they are marked men, and their friends tell stories of them, and lament over them ; whereas their rivals sink under the waters silently; but, as a matter of fact, they are ruined past hope in much smaller proportion. Granting other things equal, the chances of great success, these experts maintain, are greater for the graduates, while the chances of great failure are less; and those two facts—which we may remark, on passaut, we believe to be real, especially as regards the second—ought of themselves to outweigh the heavy claims put in for experience in practical life.
We have no intention of deciding dogmatically which of the three sets of arguers are right, though our sympathies go With the last, and a good deal of our respect with the first; but we want to point out a fact or two. One is, that the people who, of all others, seek efficiency most, and that often at the direct cost of culture, the Scotch, have long since made up their minds upon the subject. They do not want to be soft-mannered men, or refined men, or reflective men, but to be efficient men ; yet they hold University training a help, and not a drawback, and, except when defeated by want of means or other special circumstances, never fail to get it for their sons. All Scotchmen are not graduates, but in theory the Scotchman—who, be it remem- bered, is not led away on the subject either by flunkeyism, or sentiment, or any strong wish that his sons should have an easy time—holds decidedly that they ought to be, that it would be well if they could be; and that if they were, the work would be better, and not worse done. And he quotes, with some energy, the fact that the richest Scotch- man who ever lived, began life in New York as a shop assistant with a University degree. The most efficient of Continental mankind, the Prussian, agrees with the Scotchman; and so in theory does the hardest of earthly workers, the Chinese, though his notion of what education is partly puts him out of court. So in our own day and country do all manner of governing men, who say deliberately, and greatly to their own disad- vantage, that you get out of the thoroughly educated more efficient tools for all manner of work, including some very rough work—such as military engineering—than you can out of the merely experienced. That is a large body of evidence, and it is supported by almost all a priori reason- ing. Why should a certain width of mind, which is what the Universities really give, be injurious to efficiency P Gradu- ates are as healthy as the most ignorant, and rather more given to activity. They are just as brave and just as industri- ous, and ought to be much better protected—though we admit this to be doubtful as matter of fact—against that weariness with the monotony of toiling life which is one of the most frequent causes of failure. The loss of time is not, in reality, very great, being taken out of a comparatively idle period ; and as to the acquisition of enervating tastes, it is extremely doubt- ful if they are acquired. The squire who is so rough that he is hardly distinguishable from a farmer has usually "been to col- lege," while the graduate who settles in Australia or the Far West often does exceedingly well, even in making money. The argument is in favour of the Universities, but there is one heavy morsel of evidence on the other side. No profession is quite so "efficient," so absolutely and invariably competent to do its special work, as the one which neither counts nor can count graduates in its ranks. No work is quite so well done for the purposes of the doers as work on board ship, and in the Navy the idea of the first of our three arguers is absolutely dominant. "Enter young, learn at sea, postpone culture to practical service," that is the practical rule of a profession which, say its members, no one ever likes unless he is caught young. No one has ever proposed, even in Prussia, that Middies shall be graduates, and the existence of so distinct an exception ought to give us some kind of light. We think it does, and it is this. The University, so far as it is good in itself, and omitting the question whether it might not be much better, is good for all conditions of men whose work can be learned well when the mind has lost its first pliability. That, a certain stiffness of mind, an inability to accom- 'modate itself to new work of any kind, is the result, and the single result of University training which acts as a drawback to success in practical life. The boy's mind, like his body, gets set, and to force a new " ply " on it re- quires an effort which very few parents, unless strongly aided by circumstances, will ever make. If you want your lad to do a particular thing, and he does not want it himself, send him to it early, and trust to the effect of experience in producing the attraction of habit, the real gain and the only gain from the early plunge into practical work. If, on the other hand, he likes it himself, the University will do him no harm whatever, and will widen his mind for his work, besides giving him the off-chance that he may like the most gainful profession of our age, which is, most decidedly, Teaching.
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