UNDERGRADUATE ARTICLE
Going Down
By R. G. W. THEOBALD (Jesus College, Cambridge) IT is apparently an article of faith, that Cambridge should absorb the changes which have taken place in the university since 1939, without conscious effort. But the situation which confronts it has altered drastically since pre- war days. The authorities are implicitly faced, once more, with the problem of the purpose of the university. Is it to provide degrees, or has it a wider purpose, far more difficult to define, but possibly approached by Lord Beveridge recently when he suggested it was ' to learn to use freedom ' ? If the problem is ignored, Cambridge life must lose many of the qualities which would help to realise the ideal set out by Lord Beveridge. The government has decided that all students of a certain academic standing should have an opportunity of attending a university, and they apparently believe that these men will always benefit from the instruction they receive there. If a student is offered the opportunity to go to Cambridge, he almost invariably accepts, but it is unfortunately true that in many cases his expectations of Cambridge life are disappointed. He finds himself a misfit in an artificial form of life, from which he does not benefit_ and which he cannot,enjoy. Many students would gain more, both in knowledge and in satisfaction, by joining a firm direct from school than by coming up to a university. If something more than book lea-•Iing is to be imparted at the university, a mere comparison of I.Q.'s is insufficient to decide those who are capable of benefiting from it, and other qualifications must be considered. Even if a wider range of students is admitted, they will still need far more guidance and instruction than the university is at present organised to give them. The tutor, who stands in loco parentis, according to the statutes, abdicates his responsibility on far too many occasions. It is not uncommon for the undergraduate to meet his tutor twice a term, to inform him of his arrival and of his impending departure. The married don is the prime cause of this state of affairs, while the possibility of publishing original work in one of the present mass of journals makes sure that little time remains to enter- tain or instruct the student.
This volume of original work makes the undergraduates' studies increasingly unwieldy. A subject such as economics, which sixty years ago was neatly summed up in possibly thirty books, now has twenty periodicals and as many branches. In physics, practically every book which was published five years ago is outdated, and much of the subject must be learnt from recently published articles. These developments are sufficient to ensure a growing specialisation and an inability to talk intelligently on- any subject other than one's own. It comes as a shock to find that this applies, not only to the undergrad- uate, but to the don as well, whom one assumes to have had the liberal education which one fears one has missed oneself.
There can be no simple cure to the problems that this situation raises, but the extraordinary thing is that there appears to be very little discussion, among the senior members, of the issues involved. They are, of course, the only people who can take effective action. Among the suggestions current at the present time, the following are some of the most practical. The National Press has lately carried on an extensive correspondence on the subject of the suicide rate at- Oxford and Cambridge, and one of the suggested cures has been a fuller relationship between tutor and pupil. This is almost impossible while each tutor has some fifty students. Younger dons must take up these duties as well, and all must be responsible for knowing each of their undergraduates personally, so that they will realise immediately if any of their students are in difficulties.
Cambridge has a reputation for study of the humanities, but although the subjects retain their ancient names, the type of study is not the same. Arid techniques replace a true interest in the subject. The Arts student who comes to Cambridge with a desire to gain a general education is confronted with a few rigid degrees, which will force him to learn extensively, and often uselessly, in one field. He will remain as ignorant of every other subject as he was when he came up to the university. It is true that students can change from one course to another, but the degree courses are not adapted for this and the usual result is not the desired education in both subjects, but patches of knowledge in various parts of both fields. There is surely a case therefore, for a General Honours degree, in which the student would be offered a choice from all the Arts subjects, of which he could take three. He would have the option of specialising in one of these after a year, if he found that he had a definite interest in it. Every under- graduate should also be given the chance of attending any of the lectures in these courses, which would provide an oppor- tunity for gaining knowledge of those Arts subjects in which he was interested. It has been objected that this degree would not require the discipline of the mind that a single subject needs, and this may well be true, but is not necessarily of decisive importance. Another objection raised is that it would not fit people for a career, but Personnel Managers tend to regard a degree as a general indication that a student has brains, rather than as an infallible guide to the position for which he is best fitted. All these objections seem to me to pale into insignifi- cance beside the overwhelming gain of allowing a student to pursue a general education, rather than specialise in a subject in which he is not particularly interested. The result could be to resuscitate the university as a place of learning, thus arresting its development towards a cramming school. The case of the Science student must be distinguished from that of the Arts student, although a dichotomy that is too sharp must be avoided. Both learn' facts that are useless to them except to gain a university degree but this is less true in the case of the Science student. In fact, the only practicable improvement for the Science student seems to be either that his course should be curtailed, or that he should be given a fourth year. Or possibly there should be a normal three-year course and a fourth year for those who intend to do research, or have some other special need for the knowledge involved. These alternatives are certainly better than the present position, where the Science student must spend his mornings at lectures, his afternoons at the laboratories and his evenings working for supervisions. By its very nature, the university has always been fairly expensive, but now that the main financial burden is borne by the state, it is hardly sensible to expect the same standards. One can expect, however, a clear statement of .policy, which has hitherto been lacking. When grants were introduced or re-introduced after the war, some were extremely generous and all were reasonable. Inflation has reduced them drastically in value and they are no longer sufficient, in many cases, to give a reasonable standard of living even in term time. The result is that many students spend much of their vacations doing unskilled work. It is possible that this is indeed the policy of the government, either from choice or from lack of money, but it should be recognised that it is wasteful to set a half-trained chemist to drive a taxi, or a second-year English student to peel potatoes. Perhaps the country has become so numbed by the cry of university education for all who deserve it, that the standards have been set too low. It is at least arguable that those who deserve' their education would amply repay their country, if they were given the money to buy leisure.
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