University Education. 561 



that the only way of mending it was by ending it. The suggestions 

 for mending the Cape University by ending it only accentuated the 

 need for its existence. Do what they liked, and suggest what they 

 liked, the question of the private student, the question of how to deal 

 with the sparsely-populated districts of the country, would still 

 trouble them. It would not do to set up a few Colleges and expect 

 parents in remote localities to send their sons to those institutions. 

 Their policy should be directed towards bringing University education 

 within the reach of even the humblest person in South Africa. This, 

 as the facts before them shewed, had been adequately done by the 

 Cape University. The increase in the number of degrees shewn 

 upon the chart before them was very striking. Nor had that been 

 done by retarding the growth of any of the Colleges. The speaker 

 concluded by reiterating that they in the Orange River Colony thought 

 that the best interests of education in South Africa would be served, 

 for the next twenty or thirty years, by a whole-hearted devotion on 

 their part to the Cape University. 



Professor Bohle (Cape Town) asked what provision was going 

 to be made by the Cape University in regard to engineering. At 

 present, mining engineering was the only branch of the subject 

 in which examinations were held. Engineering was, and would 

 continue to be, one of the most important professions for which provi- 

 sion could be made in this country. With the exception of Mining, 

 the Cape University had made no provision, and, so far as the mining 

 classes were concerned, he did not think that the examinations held 

 were at all satisfactory. They had, at the end of a complete course, 

 an examination lasting three or four hours. That was not at all 

 satisfactory. They could not examine an engineer in three or four 

 hours. After a complete course, he should be able to write out 

 a proper thesis on special work. So far as he was aware, they 

 appointed for the mining examinations an outside examiner. The 

 outside examiner was usually a specialist in some particular subject, 

 and a specialist was not the proper person to test the general know- 

 ledge of the student. It was only a professor, and preferably a 

 professor of some other College, who was able to examine a student 

 properly. A specialist would content himself with putting questions 

 in the subject with which he was best acquainted. Apart from this, 

 he (the speaker) was anxious to know what the Cape University 

 intended to do with regard to other branches of engineering. The 

 South African College had started an engineering department, and 

 he would like to hear from Dr. Kolbe what was the intention of the 

 Cape Universitv with regard to electrical, civil, and mechanical 

 engineering. 



Professor Wilkinson (Johannesburg) laid stress on the fact that a 

 University was not merely a teaching institution, but embodied the 

 spirit of research. He pointed out that if Professor Lehfeldt's idea 

 of federating selected Colleges were carried out, they would have a 

 teaching University side by side with the present examining body, 

 and if it became a struggle for supremacy between these two, there 



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