NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



The Teaching University for London. 



I^HK agitation for a Teaching University for London seems at last 

 likely to produce some practical result. Unless an address of 

 protest be presented to Parliament before the i8th inst., the Draft 

 Charter of the New Albert University will be granted by the Crown. 

 This may seem a nominal success, but we greatly doubt whether 

 most of those who have worked at this question would have troubled 

 themselves about the matter had they seen how insignificant would 

 be the result. Briefly stated, the ideal for which the younger 

 London educationalists have been working is somewhat as follows. 

 In London we have a University which is cosmopolitan in its scope ; 

 which is a great examining board for the whole Empire, but which, 

 in consequence, has not been able to assist much in the actual work 

 of local teaching. On the other hand, we have in London enormous 

 educational endowments, and a considerable number of independent 

 institutions which for years have been doing splendid service in the 

 cause of metropolitan education : but owing to the restrictions 

 dictated by the special interests of the founders of these institutions, 

 they have inherited with their endowments a legacy of loneliness that 

 has prevented any extensive co-operation. Hence has arisen the 

 scheme for federation of all the leading educational bodies into one 

 great University. In this would be included not only the Royal 

 College of Science, the City and Guilds Institute, University, King's, 

 Bedford, and Queen's Colleges, and the great professional schools, 

 medical, legal, and theological, but also those less formally organised 

 institutions in which the bulk of the London middle class continues 

 its education, such as the City of London College, the Birkbeck, 

 the Working Men's College, and Toynbee Hall. The University 

 Extension Society, with its more popular lecture courses, would also 

 be represented, while the London School Board would be associated 

 by a system of scholarships that would enable the best of its 440,000 

 students to train for a career of literary or scientific usefulness. 



Five years ago the scheme seemed to be a beautiful, though 

 impossible dream; but as the Royal Commission of 1889 reported in 

 favour of the establishment of such a University, it has been brought 

 within the sphere of practical politics. This Commission, however, 

 reported in favour of the reform of the existing London University, but 

 the Senate and the Convocation have failed to agree on any definite 

 scheme, though both are ready to move in the desired direction. 



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