LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Vacation Work
SIR,—With great respect to the article by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading in a recent Spectator, I disagree. I have now Practically finished my allotted span at Cambridge, and, during this time, I have worked for three months as a schoolmaster at an indepen- dent school in the South of England, for five weeks as a clerk-cum- navvy in a Leicester Square travel-office, and for a fortnight as a farm-labourer on a fruit-farm in Essex.
Professor Wolfenden speaks of "courses of university study requiring that those who follow them should spend some time, outside university terms, in practical work of a relevant kind." He cites medicine, agriculture and engineering as examples. " This," he says, " is in principle university work although it is done outside the university's walls." He then proceeds to draw a distinction between such so-called " vocational activities " and the other more academic studies. Later he adds, " The primary purpose in life of a university student is. or should be, academic."
I submit that this distinction is a pity, and that the Vice-Chancellor's conclusion as to the " primary purpose " is wrong. In five months' time, as happens every year, a generation of graduates will be launched on the employment market. It is disconcertingly true that the majority—and a very considerable majority—are as yet uncertain of a job; and I think that in many cases this uncertainty is due to the fact that the wealth of time for theoretical discussion at a university does not blend easily with the stark necessity and problem of earning one's bread-and-butter in 1953 England.
Therefore I believe/that—quite apart from the very real urgency of supplementing one's university income by work in the vacation— to do a job in the holidays is to gain a valuable glimpse of the cold, unwelcome fact as to just how much work is needed to earn a con- temporary English pound, and how frighteningly soon it will dissolve.
I think that Professor Wolfenden would have been right had he said that all courses of study at a university today—and not merely vocational ones—benefit from a practical dusting; and, also, with paradoxical respect, that even today a university student can afford to take the reactionary view that to get his degree is only one of many advantages that an undergraduate can hope to enjoy.—Yours
Previous page
