THE SCOTCH UNIVERSITIES BILL.
IT has long been the fashion to attribute the intelligence of the Scottish people, and the diffusion of a taste for serious reading and thinking among them, to the system of
parish schools which the Reformers of the sixteenth century created. But, perhaps, no less credit is due to the Universities.
They have always been, and still are, thoroughly popular. Whereas, in England, during the last two centuries and a half, the middle-classes have resorted very little to Oxford and Cam- bridge, and the poorer classes not at all, the four (formerly five) Universities of Scotland have been cheap enough and accessible enough to serve the poor as well as the rich, and have, in point of fact, drawn five-sixths of their students from among those to whom a University education would have been in England an unattainable luxury. Partly, perhaps, from this cause, the Scottish institutions have never sunk into the sloth to which their English sisters succumbed in the last century. They have been obliged, by their very poverty, and by the fact that those who resorted to them needed a practically useful education, to give a more or less practical training. They have retained those professional faculties, divinity, law, and medicine, which in Oxford and Cambridge dwindled away, and are being with difficulty re- vived. They have addressed themselves to the mass of the students, aiming rather at bringing this mass up to a fairly good level than at Riving a very fine and high polish to a few choice minds. They have shown a reasonable power of keeping pace with the requirements of the age, and so far from caring for pure scholarship only, or pure mathematics only, they produced a hundred years ago the founder of one great modern science in Adam Smith, and one of the earliest and most inventive masters of another in Joseph Black. Since then there has been an unbroken series of distinguished names among their Professors, while the affiux of students has gone on increasing in a much more rapid proportion than the population of Scotland.
In spite, however, of these evidences of efficiency, there has been for some time past a prevailing feeling in Scotland that the Universities need to be reformed. In 1858 an Act was passed reconstituting their government, which had been pre- viously entirely in the hands of the Professors, and appointing an Executive Commission, by which a number of changes were carried out during the three years following. And when experience had shown that these changes had not done all that was needed to provide adequate teaching and enlarge the courses of study, a Commission of Inquiry was named, which presented its Report in 1878. We have not space to enumerate the recommendations of this Report, nor have all of them been approved by the educated opinion of Scotland, which seems to be unanimous upon three points only. They are these,— firstly, that the restriction of the Divinity Chairs to ministers of the Established Church can no longer be maintained ; secondly, that new Professorships are wanted, and endowments for them ; thirdly, that the curriculum of studies must be enlarged, new subjects more fully recognised, greater freedom of choice among subjects given to students, and in this way a means provided for carrying on persons of special capacity to a much higher proficiency in particular lines of learning and research than is at present found possible. Upon two other points of much importance, opinion is divided. One relates to the University of St. Andrew's, the most venerable by its age and picturesque in its externals of all the Northern seats of learning, but also the smallest and the worst placed. Some hold that it ought to be extinguished altogether, because the expense of keeping it up is out of proportion to its services. Others would transfer it across the Firth of Tay to Dundee, and unite with it the Science College which has been lately founded in that prosperous town. Others, again, propose to hand it over to women, and in this way turn to a new account its buildings and its traditions. And to all these views there is opposed that of the St. Andrew's people themselves, who think their seclusion in some sense an advantage, and
declare that, with a little help from the State, they could continue to do valuable work. The second point of con- troversy is as to the desirability of instituting, in all the Universities, an entrance examination. The provision for higher secondary education in Scotland is admittedly im- perfect, and many students come to the Universities who are weak in Latin and mathematics, and entirely ignorant of Greek, so that it becomes necessary for the Professors or their assistants to undertake, in these subjects, a great deal of ele- mentary work which ought to have been done in the schools. This would be corrected by an entrance examination, which, while relieving the Professors from this less worthy work and giving them more time for the higher teaching, would before long react on the schools, and tend to bring them up to a better average. On the other hand, it may fairly be said that the schools ought themselves to be improved before this severe test is imposed on them, and that men of merit and promise will be kept out of the Universities through insuffi- cient preparation who, if once admitted, would have rapidly repaired their deficiencies. There is much force in this argu- ment, for many of those students who now most distinguish themselves in mathematics, or natural science, or metaphysics do, in fact, come up very ill-grounded in Latin, and often from parts of the country where little teaching of Latin is to be had. It is a further difficulty that the attendance at the junior classes of some of the Professors would be seriously diminished, and therewith the incomes of those professors. Such an obstacle can hardly be suffered to stand in the way of a reform approved upon sufficient grounds. But it opens the question of compensating these Professors, and thereby bringing in a new element of expense and complication. The Bill which the Government have brought in, and whose second reading is to be taken as soon as the Affirmation Bill has been disposed of, does not directly grapple with any of these problems. It proposes to create an Executive Commis- sion, to last for four years, by which the work of reorganising the Universities is to be undertaken. To this Commission the widest 'powers are to be given. They may abolish all or any theological tests. They may alter the conditions of endowments and the patronage of Professorial Chairs, and the powers and the constitution of the various Governing Bodies. They may create new Professorships and allot salaries to them. They may deal in any way they please with the courses of study, the manner of teaching, the amount of fees, the length of the sessions, the de- gree examinations, the establishment of entrance examina- tions, in short, with every department of the University system. And it is left to their discretion to euppress or to reconstitute, as they may think fit, the University of St. Andrew's. These are vast powers to entrust to a body of yet unknown persons, and it could hardly be expected that the Universities would allow themselves to be flung into the cru- cible, except in return for some substantial benefit in the way of additional endowment. That benefit is conferred by the sixteenth clause of the Bill, which charges on the Consolidated Fund the annual sum of £40,000. But as the Universities now receive a sum of about .£33,000 per annum,. and as it is proposed to throw upon one of them, the University of Edinburgh, certain charges which the State now bears, the total new endowment to the Universities is only some £6,000 or £7,000. This is no great amount, to be distributed over four establishments, and will not go far in the way of providing new Chairs or more complete educa- tional appliances. There is, therefore, considerable disappoint- ment in Scotland with the pecuniary provisions of the Bill, and many Liberals may be heard to say that Scotland would probably have fared better under a Conservative Government, which would have sought to propitiate her by more generous grants. But otherwise, the measure has been received with tolerable favour. There is, of course, much difference of opinion as to the suppression of theological tests, a pretty strong party in the Established Church wishing to keep the Divinity Chairs to themselves, while the extreme Voluntaries would destroy the Chairs with the tests, and have no faculty of theology at all. But on the more important question of remodelling the courses of study, it is so generally felt that something must be done, that both the scientific party and the classical party are willing to take their respective chances.
There will be plenty of criticism from a few of the Scotch Members, but little or no opposition, and the only danger the Bill need fear is want of time and the disposition to sacrifice measures in which the smaller divisions of the United King- dom are alone interested.
The example of the Commissions which have recently dealt with the two great English Universities is not calculated to induce a cordial confidence in this method of educational reform. They were composed of men eminent, no doubt, but with no special fitness (except in the case of a very few of their members) for their difficult and delicate work. And the changes they have made, while perhaps in themselves an im- provement on the preceding state of things, have not brought those Universities nearer to the broader reforms which are really needed, nor solved any of the main problems which con- front them. In Scotland, the deficiencies of the Universities are less considerable than their merits, and the danger of ill- considered changes is therefore greater. The English Com- missioners have patched up an unsatisfactory system, but they have not spoiled anything which was working well. The Scotch Commissioners may easily do so, and may destroy the dis- tinctive merits of methods which have grown up with and out of the national life of Scotland. Yet it is hard to see how otherwise than through a Commission, University reform is possible. Parliament is utterly incompetent ; it has neither the knowledge nor the leisure. No one would surrender such matters to the Executive Government. The Universities themselves have not sufficient legal powers, and the interests of the Professors are too much involved to make it right to leave a large discretion in their hands. We are, therefore, driven back on the expedient of an Executive Commission. But it becomes important to scrutinise closely the powers which this Commission is to receive, taking care that they are no larger than is absolutely necessary, and that ample opportunity is given for objecting to their acts. And it is of even greater consequence to see that the best at- tainable men are chosen, men who know Scotland and its educational methods thoroughly, and will not seek to supersede those methods by that rival system which has triumphed in England, the system that puts examination above teaching. No delicacy towards persons, however eminent, ought to pre- vent the names of the Commissioners, when announced, from being fully and freely discussed, and better names suggested, if any can be found. Governments think far too much in such cases of getting persons whose names the public know, Peers or Judges, Members of the House of Commons, prominent clergy- men who represent the denominations, and far too little about the special fitness of the men, and of their possession of that sort of fairness and wisdom which prevents special knowledge from degenerating into a crotchety doctrinairism. It is upon the composition of the Commission that the fate of the Bill ought to depend. But we cannot leave the subject without expressing the hope that the clause which empowers the total extinction of the ancient University of St. Andrew's will be omitted, and that a somewhat more liberal pecuniary pro- vision for all the Universities will be made. No expenditure has ever proved more reproductive, to England as well as to Scotland, than that made on the Scottish Universities; and desirable as we all agree retrenchment to be, it is not with this best kind of reproductive expenditure that retrenchment ought to begin.
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