EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS. 277 



the subject-matter of any prepared books offered, some questions on 

 history and literature, and translation of easy passages not previously 

 prepared, (e) Marks of distinction should be given for work of supe- 

 rior merit in any branch of this examination, as, indeed, of every pass 

 examination conducted by the university. Candidates should not be 

 excluded from residence before passing this examination, nor should 

 they be required to pass in all subjects at the same time ; but the com- 

 pletion of this examination would be the necessary preliminary to entry 

 for any other examination required for a degree. 



2. On the question of endowments and the minimizing of waste in 

 the administration of them there is much to be said, and I would sug- 

 gest for consideration : ( 1 ) That, as a rule, open scholarships and exhi- 

 bitions might be reduced to free tuition, free rooms and free dinners 

 in hall, or thereabouts. (2) That every holder of an open scholarship 

 or exhibition, whose circumstances were such that he needed augmen- 

 tation, should, on application, receive such augmentation as the college 

 authorities considered sufficient. (3) That care should be taken to 

 discourage premature specialization at school. 



For this end it should be required that no scholar should enjoy the 

 emoluments of his scholarship until he had passed the matriculation 

 examination described above; and a fair proportion of scholarships 

 should be awarded for excellence in a combination of subjects. The 

 universities might also do good service in the way of stimulating sec- 

 ondary education, if some small proportion of their entrance scholar- 

 ships were distributed over the country as county scholarships, on con- 

 dition that the county contributed an equal amount in every case. In 

 this way some equivalent for the endowments, so cynically 1 confiscated 

 by the education act of 1902, might be recovered and used for the 

 benefit of poor and meritorious students. 



Other reforms, which would, as I believe, be productive of valuable 

 results, are the requiring from every candidate for a degree a knowledge 

 of some portion of our own literature and history, and the encourage- 

 ment of intellectual interests and ambitions by abolishing all purely 

 pass examinations. A pass examination, in which the candidates are 

 invited simply to aim at a minimum of knowledge or attainment, is 

 hardly worthy of a university. The opportunity of winning some mark 

 of distinction in this or that portion of what is now a pass examina- 

 tion would frequently rouse some latent ambition in an idle man, and 

 transform the whole spirit of his work. Thus a modest reform of this 

 kind might be of practical benefit to the nation by helping in its degree 

 to intellectualize the life of a great many of our young men, and draw 

 out unsuspected interests, faculties and tastes. 



My observations have run to such a length that I must, perforce, 

 conclude, leaving untouched other aspects of university education and 



