UNDERGRADUATE PAGE

Prelude to a University ?

By MICHAEL STEPIIENS (St. John's College, Cambridge)

THE hundred or so students who assembled at York in mid- August to attend the two summer schools organised by that city's Civic Trust Association were aware that they were about to share in an experiment. The prospectus had made it clear that the school% were arranged in order " to put the city of York and its special resources of the material of history freely at the

disposal of students." That in itself was a novel and laudable enterprise, and thus we had come together, some " to benefit from an introductory study of the great York Collections of Records, together with a survey of the wider aspects of Archive Administra- tion," others to study architectural history in a city which boasts magnificent memorials of the past in stone, brick and timber. It was to be an experiment certainly, but none of us realised of what

possible dimensions until, at the opening meeting, the Lord Mayor made it known that the schools had been planned as a deliberate

first step towards the establishment in the city of York of a permanent centre of study and scholarship. The Dean of the Cathedral, chairman of , the Academic Development Committee, expanded this remark before an immediately interested audience.

York has, he said, in the course of its history enjoyed eminence as an ecclesiastical, a political, a military, a social, an economic and a mercantile capital of England ; it has never yet been an academic capital. That it should, in time, so be is York's present ambition, and the city's intention offers material for some not altogether idle, nor irrelevant, speculation and comment. York is an unhurried city. It preserves an unusual air of quiet determination which sharply distinguishes it from the restless activity of such not-far-distant neighbours as Doncaster, Leeds and Middles-

brough. As one approaches it from the direction of any of these centres time slips idly back over centuries, so that, on their first

appearance, the city's ancient walls seem strangely contemporary.

And its " academic scheme," if it may be thus inelegantly described, is distinguished by the same mark of calm, unhustled resolve ; it also reflects a past that is age-long though not yet out of date.

Its record-collections, too immense to be detailed here, include those of the cathedral, diocese and archiepiscopate ; those of the ancient city itself ; and those of its various guilds and companies,

with a particularly fine collection of the records of the York Mer- chant Adventurers' Company. To these vast and largely untapped

resources may soon be added public and private collections from all

parts of the three Ridings, centrally deposited. In the field of architecture all who know York will be aware that its walls contain

significant examples of almost every English style, ecclesiastical and domestic, from the Georgian Mansion House, past the Tudor King's Manor, seat of the Council of the North, the fifteenth-century Mer- chant Adventurers' Hall, the great variety of the Shambles, to the Cathedral Treasurer's House and the magnificent minster itself— all these, like the records, subjected to devoted and enlightened care.

Here arc two great resources, independently providing valuable material for the extension of historical learning, and together bearing witness to a long chapter of history itself.

The senior academic foundations of England developed, almost casually, when students followed learning and its masters from Europe, and sat where they sat. Does not this York scheme seem splendidly to stand within that great tradition, and promise some- thing the like of which has not been seen in England since the Renaissance ? Its projection is as casual as the changes of time allow. It is intended to repeat the courses given at the summer schools for a number of years, and, when the moment seems opportune and the material preparations are complete, to establish some form of Institute of Historical Research, probably around students who, it is hoped, will have already been attracted to York to exploit its great resources. York wisely commits itself no further. Here planning ends and speculation begins. The planning, surely, Invites the speculation: from such beginnings, can the end be, as in the past it has been, a university ?

Dr. David Thomson has suggested (the Spectator, September 2nd', that the legitimate bases for the growth of universities are the extension of new sectors of knowledge and the provision of new forms of learning. York would qualify immediately on the first point, and the rich resources of the city would well enable it, in the event of such a development, to qualify also on the second. From origins in history and architecture the course of studies might broaden naturally in many directions. For example, a school of ecclesiastical history would be a new and natural "sector of know- ledge " appropriate to York ; and, in the home of Alcuin, a school of paleography which embraced and sought to influence modern handwriting would be a welcome and near-new " form of learning."

It is here pertinent to ask whether York would be able to attract an adequately skilled staff, and sufficient pupils to support this development. One answer would be that until it did there could be no university, and if it did there could. Since time is of no great importance the consideration is not urgent, and the indications are that there would be no great difficulties in this respect. With the example of the first York summer schools before us, it is clear that the city already possesses a nucleus of eminent scholars among its citizens, who have sponsored and directed these courses and will continue to do so. They have been supported in this by others equally eminent from well-established academic institutions in all parts of the country. Similarly, a full complement of student! assembled for the courses in August, largely drawn from both senior and junior members of many British universities. By common consent the schools were highly successful, and present a very favourable augury. Perhaps a more important question is whether support would later be forthcoming from such bodies as the evidently all-important University Grants Committee, without a consequent direct and external pressure being brought to bear upon those con- cerned, either to accelerate their plans or to conform to a prescribed pattern of development. Such a scheme as this should necessarily set its own rate of growth and work out its own pattern—but the question remains unanswered.

Under this speculative aspect the York scheme provides an inter- esting commentary upon the much-discussed question of university expansion. In the first place such a development would render irrelevant recommendations such as those advanced by the Barlow Committee which, in 1946, urged the immediate establishment of several new university colleges and the foundation of at least one new university in order to secure double the supposedly requisite output of graduates " in the national interest." There would be present no conditioning belief that university development is primarily a matter of supply and demand. Nor could there be any set " target of student numbers " to increase the " undergraduate spate " against which Dr. Thomson warned. Since York acknow- ledges no specific aim in this, or any similar, direction, targets are of no account. Secondly, it is apparent that those conditions which elsewhere have produced many of our " Redbrick " universities do not apply in York. Unlike Leeds and Sheffield, for example, York is not the centre of a vast and concentrated population for whose sons and daughters it is anxious to provide the higher educational and vocational facilities of a " home university."

The form of this article may obscure the fact, which is repeated here, that the York academic scheme is still in its very early and tentative stages. It makes no pretensions in the direction here suggested, and the eventual form it will take must remain a matter of conjecture and a subject of patience. Nevertheless, present signs indicate the possible inauguration of a new phase in university development, akin once again to the forsaken " Oxbridge " tradition; nor is it altogether without the bounds of possibility to suggest that, in the quiet and inspiring seclusion of York, an institution— unplanned but not unprecedented—which is only incidentally a " graduate factory," might one day offer students a richer oppor- tunity than many have dared to expect, and which they have almost forgotten to desire. Many others beside Mr. Michael Oakeshott, who coined the phrases (Cambridge Journal, June, 1949), have some reason to hope that, however unintentionally, " the gift of an interval" may be bestowed and " the doctrine of the interim" preached again in another English university.