Undergraduate Page
" STUDENT UNDERWORLD "
By J. T. EVANS (Selwyn College, Cambridge)
SINCE the war ended, there has been a stream, sometimes running shallow but never failing, of " letters to the editor " and " from a special -contributor " in somewhat insidious denigration of the post-war university population. This growth of adverse criticism may be divided into two main branches. First comes the more amusing, a constant bemoaning of an alleged " serious-mindedness " of the present-day student. We are told he is staid, overconscien- tious, " syllabus-minded " and generally lacking in a taste for cakes and ale. Our modest application to our studies is deplored by all manner of accomplished and urbane gentlemen, all of whom contrive to let us know, with a careful roguishness, that they, too, have heard the chimes at midnight and don't regret it for one moment. We are regaled with hallowed reminiscences of " a very wet party in so-and-so's rooms when so-and-so (preferably a household name) fell out of the window," and of " that time when all the trousers in the whole college were found in the fountain by the Dean in his bathrobe," or how someone suspended " a line-full of feminine laundry between two chimneys of the Divinity School." One gathers that sherry is, or was, an indispensable accomplishment to a liberal education and that the arbitrary addition of porcelain to high and reverend pinnacles is a necessary and laudable outlet to the high spirits of mettlesome youth. One such effusion drew a reply from an ex-serviceman—as most students today are—in which he suggested as a possible explanation of this "lamentable lack of joie de vivre" his own experience ; he had had his fill of fireworks, street-fighting and other such alarms and excursions while on active service ; he had also completed his expeTiments in the recognised dissipations, and now looked forward to a comparatively peaceful life as a civilised adult. This temperate retort closed this particular exchange.
To a present-day student, whether " staid and overconscientious " or satisfactorily adolescent in his recreations, this attitude of reproachfulness seems to contain more of petulant nostalgia than of well-directed criticism. We all have Directors of Studies ; must there now be Directors of everything else ? But this first branch of the assault is, critically speaking, no more than frivolous ; it must be accepted with the feelings of a Senior Nihilist whose grandson hands him a Fabian publication. The second species is, arguably, rather more insidious and malefic. It concerns itself largely with a " deterioration in the morale of our universities " ; they are become "degree factories " ; the students are involved in " spiritual bank- ruptcy," we are told. An article in a recent edition of an " authorita- tive " periodical provides what may be the locus classicus for this particular manifestation of despondency. The writer clearly felt himself well qualified to give an account of the student " ethos," for he starts, " I write from the student underworld." We are unfortunately not told the whereabouts of this vantage-point, as from it the writer of the article was able to see many things which, it must be confessed, are invisitble to the non-troglodytic undergraduate.
Literal quotation will convey the gist and feeling of the article. "The students," we learn, "have a notion of the university as a degree-factory ; and exhibit a trade union attitude to dons and staff : they show contempt for the ' intellectual ' and ' merely academic.' The most common fundamental characteristic of the modern student is that of despair. It is rarely articulate and scarcely conscious." Fortunately, 'one feels, this excursion into the collective unconscious is not pursued, and as the " despair " is " rarely articulate," it would be churlish to desire evidence of any sort. The diagnosis of a "trade union attitude" is followed by an analysis, which successfully combines the acuity of the psychiatrist with the vision of the moral philosopher, where we learn that " tacitly and quite unpolitically they [the students] assume that the future is with Marxism in some form or other—they have no real conviction that they or Britain have any part in the future scheme of things. The spiritual situa- tion as seen by them can be expressed in one word—bankruptcy. They believe free-will an illusion and read only set books." The
case-history ends on the note of an Old Testament prophet: "This is a generation which knows how to doubt, not to believe."
Further quotation provides some interesting revelations about the purpose of examinations—it is " social and economic advancement." Students have little regard for academic standards ; in the Arts Faculties " they are taught, for instance, to criticise and assess imaginative experience they have never had," which is a somewhat cavalier treatment of the possible emotional capacity of men and women in their early twenties. After all, one usually supposes Keats, Shelley, Marlowe and Mozart, to mention only a few, to have achieved some imaginative experience at this period of their lives. Finally comes a last warning to the Lenin members of our univer- sities. " They are living on the edge of a liberal civilisation, but their pupils are already over the precipice." It would seem that vertigo may be regarded as the occupational disease of sitting at High Table.
The root cause of a large amount of such " criticism " is a passionate resentment that anyone should read for a degree with any view towards earning a living. One's years at the university are the " halcyon years," to be kept sacred and apart in the memory from all the years which follow them and are to be spent in this battle for existence. Incidentally, the " degree-factory " argument does not hold water, as there are, perhaps, many easier and far more lucrative ways of earning a living than via a university, as comparison of the tax-returns of our teachers and scientists with those of the commercial world should convince. Even if it were true that students in general were obsessed with a belief that a degree is no more than a means to " social and economic advance- ment," would they personally be to blame in that ? In a world where life is fortunately not yet possible without some effort, where is the shame in taking thought for the morrow ? The writer of the quoted article makes a' left-handed apologia for this contemporary materialism: " Increasingly the students come from a section of society which has had no previous contact with the university." That is, at best, a detestable statement, and in any case it is surely a perverse, not to say unconstructive, criticism to suggest that those who are now enjoying a university education are mostly unsuitable.
The " contempt for the ' intellectual' and ' merely academic' " is not a characteristic of the undergraduates alone ; it appears in all grades of a healthy university. It is possible that we differ only over the connotation of " merely academic," for to a present-day student the phrase has the meaning of " divorced from reality, not relevant to any constructive critical approach." It is not that the student of today despises learning or places a pejorative inter- pretation on " intellectual" as such ; it is that learning unrelated to life, not touching human awareness, appears without profit. The emulation of Mr. Casaubon is to be deplored, not the doctrine of "Art for Art's sake." It is only too easy to appear priggish and affected in any statement of ultimate beliefs, and it is perhaps the fear of appearing thus which inhibits the display of spiritual solvency so obviously desired by the writer of the article I have quoted.
To describe the fundamental characteristic of the thousands of British students as despair is to state an absurdity ; despairing people do not undertake lengthy and exacting courses of study. Neither Milton nor Wordsworth regarded their university highly, and it may be that " a correspondent " is to be associated with them in this. But it is, perhaps, more likely that the explanation of the appearance of such a pessimistic, not to say inaccurate, article may be found if we view the university in the way that perhaps most men remember it, as "That ocean where each kind Does straight his own resemblance find."
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