UNDERGRADUATE PAGE

No Jobs for the Boys

3N W. R. MOSS (Manchester University) TO get a degree To the undergraduate that is the be-all and end-all of existence. For three years it sustains him during the weary hours of monotonous lectures, dreary reading and frantic last-minute cramming ; it continues to haunt him during the vacant hours when despair or optimism has driven him to flinging

his books behind the settee and seeking relaxation where he may.

If in those three years he thinks at all about his post-graduate future, a Micawberesque confidence soon drives the thought into the far background, but, for the most part, the course to be run seems so formidable that whatever comes after looks plain sailing. The mounting horror of these three years reaches its fantastic conclusion when, about the middle of the third June, he is thrust into an examination hall whose atmosphere is a creditable imitation )f the Albert Hall on Prom. nights. (Anyone disposed to cavil at the English summer should choose for his next holidays the weeks reserved by the malevolent despots of the educational world for

their annual auto-da-fe; he will have nothing to grumble at then.) Having got thus far, the examinee is left for several stretches of

three hours at a time to chew his pen and gaze despairingly

around at the hordes of scribbling women regurgitating information like Vesuvius in eruption. This stage of the disease is spread over

a fortnight or more, and is followed by a coma lasting for three weeks or so until some good Samaritan revives him with a card to say that the results have been up a week and he's " through." Any resultant elation is quickly dispelled by the thought that his F.E.T.

grant has now ceased and by the sudden, depressing realisation that outside -`4 Oxbiidge" or " Redbrick " there is a sordid, strug-

gling, sadistic world in which he must become, as the jargon goes, "a worker by hand or brain." When this thought thrusts itself into his consciousness the process called higher education is fairly complete, and the newly-hatched graduate may console himself that he has at last arrived at the point passed by his future competi- tor, the "average man," some considerable time before.

Now though, during his long vacations—why are these things not called " holidays " ?—the potential graduate may have paid hearty lip-service to the brotherhood Of man by strenuous work in farming or globe-trotting, it is a safe bet that, once having graduated, he will not want to spend the future as a "worker by hand," for the idea of the career open to talent still runs deep, though now it is usually given the respectable garment of " equality of opportunity.' For a variety of reasons then, some good, some bad, " talent " sees little scope for itself outside the white-collar jobs, and hence thrusts itself into the scramble to avoid the donkey-work.

If the graduate holds a science degree he can slip fairly easily into the research laboratories of some firm or other, or into the

frantic quest for bigger and better atom bombs which the statocrats of the world are organising for us. He then spends his time in the manner of so many 'of the scientific hierarchy, snarling that science is being " enslaved " and that the fault of this lies with " the system." This is invariably associLted with long-defunct capitalism Such is the value of the training given by scientific specialisation.

The arts graduate is not quite so lucky. When the new session begins, the braver ones who, on getting their degrees, decided to cut themselves adrift and sail into the sunlit seas of full employment can mostly be seen hanging around the Union, their pockets stuffed with short and not sweet letters from numerous firms to the effect that " we regret your qualifications are not quite

What we require," or from the nationalised industries that" vacan- cies are first made available to the members of our service." Apart,

therefore, from the fortunate few who have secured post-graduate scholarships or the unfortunate few who are unable to pass the necessary medical examination, the Nast majority of the arts faculties drift not altogether enthusiastically into the Teachers' Training Department, to be let loose on the educational ladder in another twelve months. This situation would not be so bad if the contemporary world did not happen to be crying out so loudly for scientists and tech- nicians, but, as it is, the non-scientific teacher is left to teach subjects which are less and less in demand, and which have practical value only for examination purposes. it is true that a good case can be made out for the usefulness of academic subjects in the formation of character and as a discipline, but this hardly applies at the level at which they can be absorbed in schools. At present, however, the scientists who are needed to set their future followers on the same road are rarely to be found entering the teaching profession. There seems to be no escape from this dilemma unless we are prepared to adopt outright direction and insist that a fair proportion of science graduates goes into teaching and, at the same time, restrict the entry into arts faculties and divert existing accommodation to the use of the science people. Very fortunately, no one is yet willing to adopt this drastic measure.

If, then, the present stress on specialisation is leading to the absurd position that all the teachers teach what isn't wanted and that there is no one there to teach what, in the sacred name of production, is wanted, the only solution seems to be to call a halt to the present trend of academic over-specialisation, for this latter is what afflicts the universities today. True, they offer a great variety of courses and subjects, but to the individual student they offer only a speciality which leaves him ignorant of everything outside his particular field. This leaves him with a tendency either to over-rate the importance of his own subject, or to react against the surfeit of concentrated information which he has had to acquire, and to spend his time wishing, " If only I'd done so-and-so instead."

Since comparatively few can, after leaving the academic world, specialise to the extent they have done while in it, the value of academic specialisation during pre-degree studies is open to question. No great harm would be done if the present insistence on knowing a lot about a little were replaced by courses requiring a little about a .lot. Admittedly, this would mean a diminution in original research, but this would be no bad thing, at any rate in the pre- graduate stage. There is far too much diligent digging going on in the universities at present. This process is based on the pathetic fallacy that there are no bad facts ; that all accumulation of information is " scientific" and hence synonymous with " good." Unfortunately, it is all too often a very inadequate substitute for ideas—a method of hiding lack of thought. Students are sent into the academic by-ways to chase remote information merely because that information has not previously been parcelled together in some form which can be conveniently labelled. No one stops to consider that the probable reason why nobody has bothered to follow it up previously is that ii is not worth following. Nowadays, provided the subject is sufficiently obscure, the student is left to bury himself in research and waste time which could be well spent in the absorption of a wider culture. When presented, the hard-won information is read by half a dozen people, then passed to the inner recesses of the ivory tower, there to find again the oblivion from which it should never have been raised.

Research and specialisation are intimately connected and cannot be discarded without grave results, but they could, at least, cease to dominate the pre-graduate curricula of the universities. This article may tend to regard university education generally in too utili- tarian a light, but it must be recognised that in present practice the university is only the final stage in the highly-competitive ladder of " equality of opportunity " and that it is, unfortunately, regarded in that light by most of the students and by the successive Govern- ments which determine general educational policy. It is neither likely nor desirable that the functional aspect of higher education will ever be eliminated, but it is submitted that function should be the production of trained minds and not of specialised minds. The supersession of the present arbitrary distinction between faculties and " scientific " and. " non-scientific " would assist towards this end. We might then be spared the nuisance of scientists who are economic babes-in-the-wood, and of economists who fondly imagine that their ideas still receive the blessing of Newtonian physics. It might also help to solve the problem of arts graduates in a technical society