55- Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



course a Federal University must necessarily be a strong University. 

 A good many people seemed to consider that if four Colleges were 

 federated into a University, they must perforce get a University four 

 times as strong as any one of the Colleges ! Dealing with the draw- 

 backs of the federal system, the speaker alluded to the question of 

 the distance between the various institutions comprised in the federa- 

 tion. In Wales, of course, distances were not very great, but the 

 difficulty from this standpoint would be enormously accentuated in 

 any scheme of federation designed to include the whole of South 

 Africa ; in fact, in any scheme of federation which could be carried 

 out in this country. Even if the Transvaal decided to stand out, 

 and they were only attempting to federate the Colleges in Cape 

 Colony, this difficult would still be felt. Then there was the further 

 difficulty that institutions in different parts of the country might want 

 to develop in different directions. Under federation, Colleges' might 

 want to discuss schemes in which they were taking no actual part. 

 Such a position would mean that constant compromise on various 

 points would be necessary in order that progress might be effected. 



Then, if they were going to have common examinations, they 

 would have a further drawback by reason of the rigidity of that 

 system, but this would disappear if they adopted the Stellenbosch 

 scheme, and had separate examinations for the separate Colleges. 

 He would like to make one or two remarks on this proposal, because 

 it might commend itself to some who objected to separate Universities, 

 and yet recognised the difficulties in connection with the usual federa- 

 tion scheme. The difficulty in connection with this proposal was that 

 if each federated College was conducting its own examinations, the 

 examinations of the different Colleges would be, of course, of a 

 different standard. An effort might be made to keep them to the 

 same standard, and a fair degree of uniformity might be attained, but 

 they would certainly not have the same standard throughout. At the 

 end of the year something like fifty graduates, who had been 

 examined by different Colleges, would be sent out, all with the same 

 degree, though they had not passed the same examinations, and 

 though the standards might have varied to either a slight or a com- 

 paratively large extent, as the case might be. In his opinion, this 

 was a distinct drawback. If there were to be entirely separate 

 examinations, then the men ought to be able to say at what College 

 they had been educated, and the degree ought to show at what place 

 the work had been done. They would then be much more likely to 

 maintain the standard, because he did not think that the various 

 institutions would adopt the suicidal policv of trving to cheapen the 

 examinations. If. however, they instituted separate examina- 

 tions, why should they not take one more step forward, 

 and decide that each College should give a separate degree? The 

 Council of the Victoria College had recognised that, as shewn by 

 the second clause of their memorandum, expressing the conviction 

 that, failing the adoption of the amendments which they rerom 

 mended, the existing Universitv should be dissolved, and separate 

 charters granted to certain Colleges to be named bv Parliament. 



