Pronouncements by the Vice-Chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge draw attention
to certain serious university problems. At Oxford Dr. Lowe criticised with much justice statutes which compel retire- ment from various offices at the arbitrary calendar age of 65, regard- less of considerations of health and efficiency. Extension would to some extent relieve the shortage of man-power. (Latitude here is manifestly desirable. Normally Dr. G. M. Trevelyan should
have retired from the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, at 70, but the College Council had power to extend his term by five years, and of course exercised it.) There was equal force in his denunciation of the scandalous inadequacy of academic salaries. At Cambridge Dr. Raven protested, again with all too much justice, that immediate problems were so insistent that there was no time for thought about long-term planning or considered study of what the function of the university in relation to the nation's present needs should be. Only one applicant out of twelve for entry to the university can be accepted, and even so overcrowding is intolerable. New colleges are all but indispensable, but the cost of building new colleges is all but prohibitive. No one knows the answer. No one
even knows who should give it. * * * *
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