PROVINCIAL UNIVERSITIES.
AGOOD deal of discussion has arisen this week in relation to the aspiration of Owens College to become an independent University, and a very interesting letter in Wednesday's Times by Mr. H. J. Roby,—one of the small minority of Governors of Owens College who dissented from the proposal, and one whose long experience in educational matters under the En- dowed Schools Commission gives his opinions an exceptional authority on matters of this kind,—raises the true issue in- volved in it. Mr. Roby thinks that if the University of London does not at present meet the wants of those who study at such places as Owens College, Manchester, and who desire degrees as evidence of the training they have gone through, it must be through some remarkable defect in the present working of the University of London ; and accordingly he suggests the appointment of a Commission to inquire into the present working of the University of London, with a view to see what there may be in the present operation of its examining system which gives occasion to just objection in the local Colloges,—suggesting, for instance, that it might be possible for the various Colleges, with the approval of the University, themselves to suggest the books in which their students should be examined, so as to give the teachers in these Colleges a more practical influence over the curriculum than they at present have.
Now, this is a very practical and important suggestion, though there will, undoubtedly, be great difficulties in carry- ing it out to the conclusion Mr. Roby points at. One of the first conditions of University honours at all events,—perhaps not so much of mere degrees, but even of mere degrees, so far as by arrangement into classes you give them some of the character of honours,—is real competition, and every teacher knows how great is the difficulty of comparing fairly the work of men who come up for examination on different subjects. But into de- tails of this kind we do not wish at present to go. We fully admit that the real difficulty of the University of London is its slender connection with the teaching bodies which supply it with so many of its examinees. On the one hand, those teaching bodies feel aggrieved that they are compelled to clip and cut their own experience as teachers to meet the Procrustean rules of a body which has not had their experience, and ignores all the lessons their experience has taught them ; on the other hand, it is not easy,—it is hardly possible,—for a University whose Executive resides in one place to be much governed by the views and wishes of men who reside some hun- dreds of miles away, and have neither the time nor the strength to devote to the task of at once influencing the University at one place, and teaching the candidates for University distinctions in another. Then, again, the wishes of different schools estab- lished at great distances from each other, and not in communica- tion with each other, are very different, and no University can satisfy the wants of one without ignoring the wishes of another. But all this shows the real difficulties of the case. In Oxford and Cambridge, the scholars who provide the University with its Executive live in close proximity with the various teaching staffs of the various Colleges. In their case, there- fore, the difficulty of establishing a real understanding between the teachers and the testers of the teaching, does not exist. The same may be said of Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aber- deen, and St. Andrews. The objection to some of the Scotch Universities is the objection which is now so powerfully urged against the granting of a University charter to Owens College, that there is hardly variety enough of scholarship and modes of thought among them to give sufficient weight to the tests applied to the results of collegiate teach- ing. The danger is, that the teachers who, from any defect, however acquired, have failed to give to their pupils a particular element in the training characteristic of their subject, will also fail to discover and expose that defect, in consequence of the teaching and the testing being too much lodged in the same hands. That is even more dangerous than leaving the teaching and the testing in entirely different hands, as happens where a local college teaches, and a London Board tests the teaching ; but though decidedly the more dangerous fault of the two, we quite admit that a complete divorce between the teaching and the testing authority involves difficulties and defects of a very characteristic kind, and that it is extremely natural for a powerful and largely-attended College like Owens College, Manchester, to feel the defect keenly, and to aspire to a position of independence of so foreign a body as the University of London. Nor can we deny that the leading men in Owens College are alive to its own defective quail- fications for the position of an independent University, and are doing what is in their power to supply them, by their very thoughtful scheme for constituting the Executive of the new University which they wish to create. In the Memorial to the Privy Council developing their plans, they propose to place on the Executive body of the new University not merely representatives of Owens College, but one member nominated by the Lord Presi- dent of the Privy Council—i.e., by the head of the Education Department for the time being ; and what is more important, they propose to appoint Examiners to conduct, "conjointly with the Professors and Lecturers of the College," the examinations of the University, Examiners therefore who are obviously to be selected from outside the College, and not from members of its teaching staff. And the provisions of this kind might be strengthened. To our minds, it is not sufficient to have only one member of the Executive of the University appointed by authorities quite in- dependent of the College and its associations ; and clearly it would be well to give such independent member or members a special veto on the nomination of the Examiners to be selected from outside.
Passing by these details, however,—which though of the first importance as regards the special aspirations of Owens College, scarcely affect the general question which Mr. Roby has raised,—let us ask how far it is likely or even desirable that the groat provincial teaching bodies should always remain content to send .up their students to such an Examining Board as that provided by the London University for men who are desirous to have the solidity of their attainnaents tested, but who may have acquired those attainments just as they please, whether by private study, or by the aid of tutors, or at some of the great Collegiate institutions now so rapidly multiplying in the provinces ? Now it seems to us, that as soon as any great provincial institution begins to be conscious of a really vivid academical life of its own, to acquire provincial fame, to bring up men who become eminent and of whom their Alma Mater is proud, and in a word, to be conscious of a certain genius loci, they will almost necessarily begin to revolt against the necessity of sending their men to be tested and examined by a completely foreign body, out of sympathy probably with their most vivid traditions, indifferent to their special methods of teaching, and yet, of course, carrying off a good deal of the credit which, in the case of a degree locally conferred, belongs to the institution that conferred it. Of course an Owens-College man who has taken a University of London degree is known subsequently, assuredly not less, pro- bably a good deal more, as a University of London man, than he is known as an Owens-College man ; and it is not in human nature for a College conscious of .a great deal of power, and even of a genius of its own, to submit permanently to this loss of a credit duly earned. For it is undoubtedly true that had Aber- deen, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow been mere Colleges, compelled to go to some other central body for the degrees which would stamp their students as men of learning, though they might very well have had better educated alumni to boast of in consequence of such a necessity, they would certainly have had very much fewer of them. Their name and fame would not have been what they are, if they had had to divide with a central Board the credit of the University dis- tinctions which they have conferred, This, we say, is a matter of course, and a consequence of the most universal ten- dencies in human nature. And therefore, while we quite believe that unless the most careful guarantees be taken for the efficiency and independence of any new University that may be created, the creation would be mischievous, and consider that it wouldbe far better for Owens College to remain simply a training institution for another generation, than to blossom prematurely into a Uni- versity of easy virtue and no great academic repute, we hold also that if these guarantees for independent scholarship can be adequately supplied, it is presumably both for its own interest and for the interests of culture generally, that its wish should be granted. What is really essential is that no new provincial University should be created without guarantees for a really high standard of scholarship of its own. But we cannot believe that either in the interests of Oxford and Cambridge, or in the interests of the University of London, provincial institutions of high power and vitality should be repressed and deadened, only that the prestige of the older .Universities should be kept up. As the love of educa- tion grows, there will be young men in all the more active and populous provinces of England who cannot afford to live at Oxford or Cambridge for two or three years, at a minimum expense of ±120 per annum, and who yet will desire something like collegiate teaching and collegiate life, and who, when they have had it, will wish for a degree not only stamping them as educated men, but specially associated with the institution to which their loyalty is given. With the proper guarantees against abuse, we believe that it will really stimulate the love of the higher culture among the people that such facilities should be granted ; and if it be so, all personal prepossessions in favour of the existing Universities should give way. No one can pretend for a moment that Scotland would be what it is, if the Scotch Colleges had been Colleges alone, without the power to grant degrees. And yet it is quite certain that in Scotland the power to grant degrees has, until quite recently, been used with very easy virtue indeed. Now, what is true obviously and in a high degree of the value of the Scotch Uni- versities to Scotch education, may certainly well be true of the value of a great provincial English University to the provincial education of England ; and we are inclined to believe that it will be so if such institutions as Owens College grow up to real strength and prosperity, in one or two of the provinces of England, and demand an independent life of their own. Though a reckless multiplication of Universities, Such as was duo to the very minute subdivision of Germany into small independent States, is mischievous, yet an artificial centralisation of the Academic system in a great and populous Kingdom like ours, with a very different type of educational genius in different parts of it, may be a blunder on the other side. What is really desirable is the maximum of stimulus to true culture; and sometimes, undoubtedly, that is not gained without sacrificing something of abstract perfection in the institutions by which it is to be fostered. But we think we see the time approaching when one or more Provincial Uni- versities may lend as much new stimulus to the higher educa- tion in England, as that multiplication has unquestionably lent to the higher education in Scotland, in Germany, and in the United States.
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