5 DECEMBER 1885, Page 3

The adjourned meeting of the London University Convocation will be

asked ou Tuesday to vote the appointment of a new Committee to consider Mr. Magnus's plan for reforming the Uni- versity. We believe that that plan is free from some of the defects which affected Lord Justice Fry's, and that though its outline is at present very vague, it may be so worked out as to give the great mass of candidates for London degrees,—those, namely, who come to the University from private tuition or th*, teaching of comparatively small and obscure schools,—a

tee that they will not be placed at any new disadvantage as compared with the students of the Colleges whose teachers are to be asked to take some share in advising the University on its curriculum and its examinations. That is the first and most important condition of reconstruction,— that the students whom the University now receives in each large numbers should not be frightened away. The next condition of success is that nothing should be done which even tends to make the outer world think that the University is about to lower the standard ofits degrees. Very likely the result of this may be that the London. Hospitals and Schools of Medicine will ask for power to wafer degrees in medicine on terms about as easy as the University. of Edinburgh imposes on its medical graduates. Nor should we particularly object to that result so long as the degree wereno much easier than the London University degree, that that degree remained an object of as much ambition as it now is to all exceptionally able men. It does not matter to the London Univemity whether men who shrink from its high standard go to Scotland for a diploma, or obtain one from a second-rate degree-giving body in the capital itself, so long as that body does not take any name which can be confounded with that of the London University.