86 



NATURE 



[May 23, 1878 



If Leeds had wanted to be incorporated on an equal 

 footing with Manchester from the first ; if she had been 

 conscious that her present position made that claim 

 unreasonable ; if she had utterly disbelieved the Man- 

 chester people and their promises to listen to her as soon 

 as'she liked, and been convinced that her appeal against 

 them to the Privy Council would be in vain, she would 

 have acted much as she has done in getting up this de- 

 putation. The promoters of a real rival scheme would 

 have named the colleges which should at once have been 

 confederated and constituted the new university. It was 

 to use a weapon of war to entreat the Government " t/ 

 they think of chartering a new university," to sit down 

 and evolve a scheme of a "new corporation," and to 

 sketch its fundamental principles in " the conditions of 

 incorporation laid down in the charter." 



It seems tolerably plain that the Owens College people 

 in their anxious attempts to be reasonable, to safeguard 

 every interest, and to take account of every susceptibility 

 have gone too far. They have offered terms to Leeds 

 and all similar institutions of the present and future, 

 which Lord Frederick Cavendish, the President of the 

 Yorkshire College, declares "fair and equitable," but 

 which seem only to have aggravated Leeds and to have 

 weakened their own case as against the University of 

 London, Now that that body appears at least to think of 

 returning to the principle of affiliated colleges, she may 

 perhaps soon offer a better centre of affiliation than 

 Manchester or any new college in the north. It has been 

 her deliberate policy for the last twenty years to exercise 

 no control over what used to be called affiliated colleges, 

 which she does not exercise over private tutors and 

 private students. That policy] was logical, and it will be 

 more than curious to see how the senate, if they proceed 

 to move in the lines indicated to them in Convocation, 

 will attempt to retrace their steps. Convocation proposes 

 that " the list of such colleges should be revised from time 

 to time," and that the right of "excluding from or admitting 

 to such list " should again be exercised. But it does not 

 say how an affiliated college in the list is to hold any better 

 position in the Universitythan a private "crammer" who 

 stands upon his own capacity for successfully preparing 

 candidates for degrees. It suggests that the authorities 

 of such colleges be entitled to communicate with the 

 Senate from time to time about the examinations. Such 

 communications could not fail to be interesting, but it is 

 difficult to see how they can be given particular effect 

 to, so long as it is the fundamental principle of the Uni- 

 versity that the non-collegiate should be examined on the 

 same footing as the collegiate student. It proposes that 

 the examiners should form a board for mutual con- 

 sultation with some authority, and nothing could be 

 better. It suggests that independent research should 

 be recognised in connection with the higher degrees, and 

 the suggestion appears eminently reasonable and practi- 

 cable. It recommends the foundation of University 

 Chairs for the cultivation of such branches of study as 

 can be more conveniently or' more efficiently taught by a 

 central body. It is not very easy to realise the kind of 

 University Chairs suited to a central university with no 

 students directly connected with it and no class rooms. 

 Possibly the occupants of the Chair would have to give 

 isolated courses of lectures, open, perhaps, to the general 



public, or to students of affiliated colleges, such as are 

 now given at the Royal Institution. Certainly, eminent 

 men could be found to do as much in the way of teaching 

 in connection with the University of London as some of 

 the distinguished occupants of the professorial Chairs of 

 Oxford and Cambridge. 



Convocation desires to move towards the rehabili- 

 tation of the affiliated colleges which were practically 

 cast adrift twenty years ago, and it will be most 

 interesting to see whether they can be rehabilitated 

 consistently with the fundamental principle that the 

 examinations of the university are to be perfectly open 

 to all students who pay the examination fee. We venture 

 to hazard the prediction that they cannot, and that 

 though the affiliated colleges may be flattered with excep- 

 tional courtesies, affiliation will never mean anything very 

 serious so long as the unattached student is not given 

 up. Neither Manchester nor probably the airy confedera- 

 tion sketched out in the supposed interest of Leeds, 

 find any room for the non-collegiate student. The 

 promoters of both schemes will watch with the keenest 

 interest the action of the London Senate in view of 

 the resolutions of Convocation. But there is no such 

 prospect of radical changes in the attitude of the 

 University that either need be postponed. 



Owens College would probably hare been in a better 

 position [to-day if she had never gone out of her 

 way to conciliate Leeds. She has only been wasting an 

 energy that might have been better spent in combating 

 the "Dutch auction" theory of degrees which Lord 

 Ripon brought out with great emphasis at the depu- 

 tation. The degradation of degrees would be a serious 

 evil, for ordinary degrees are as low at present at 

 Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere, as any reason- 

 able being can wish. But the multiplication of uni- 

 versities, so far from being an evil, is an unmixed 

 good, and degradation and multiplication are by no 

 means inseparable, though they have frequently been 

 combined. German degrees were at one time in a 

 disgraceful state; American degrees are in a bad way 

 now; Scotch degrees lost caste when St. Andrews, 

 which had no real medical school, sold licences to 

 treat Her Majesty's subjects medically after an easy 

 examination. There is one simple remedy. Let the 

 universities give their degrees without fee or reward, 

 and let these degrees cease to admit directly to any pro- 

 fession. The temptation has always been a pecuniary 

 one. A Dutch auction is only possible in a world where 

 people with brains and no money want to get money 

 out of the pockets of people with no brains. Even 

 without so radical a remedy, the Dutch auctions have 

 been stopped in Germany and in Scotland, and to a 

 large extent in America. They need never begin in Man- 

 chester. Let it be arranged that no new degree-granting 

 university shall derive one halfpenny of profit from its 

 degrees, and the whole difficulty vanishes. If there were 

 no fear of the degradation of degrees, it would be as 

 much for the benefit of the people of England that Man- 

 chester and Leeds and Birmingham and I^iverpool should 

 become University seats in due season, after they have 

 fairly won their title by their own exertions, as Manches- 

 ter has already done, as that everybody should learn to 

 read and write and count. We cannot understand the 



