554 



NATURE 



[June 30, 192 1 



University Statistics of the United Kingdom, 1919-20.* 



UP to the year 1913-14 the Board of Education 

 presented Annual Reports relating to uni- 

 versity institutions in England and Wales in re- 

 ceipt of grants from the Board, but during the 

 war this publication was discontinued. The 

 volume now issued by the University Grants Com- 

 mittee marks the end of this five-years statistical 

 holiday and the starting-point of a series of 

 returns which, including, as they do, Scottish 

 and Irish institutions in receipt of annual grants, 

 and, as they presumably will, the Universities of 

 Oxford and Cambridge and Trinity College, Dub- 

 lin, will be far more comprehensive and significant 

 than the pre-war returns published by the Board 

 of Education. In eight comparative tables the 

 public is provided with an abundant, but com- 

 pact, store of information regarding university 

 students of both sexes — whence they came, at 

 what ages they were admitted, where they re- 

 sided while pursuing their studies, the directions 

 and durations of the courses they followed, the 

 degrees and diplomas they gained — as well as 

 complete statements of the grants made from the 

 Treasury in each of the years 191 3-14 to 1919-20. 

 These are followed by notes and statistics and 

 accounts concerning each institution separately. 

 The notes are arranged under such heads as 

 "Faculties and Subjects," "Extension Work," 

 "Cost of Living and Hostel Facilities," "Local 

 Support." To the accounts of income and ex- 

 penditure are appended expenditure schedules 

 showing, separately for each department, the 

 salaries of departmental heads, number and 

 salaries of other teachers, cost of departmental 

 and laboratory maintenance, etc. In future years 

 income and expenditure are to be tabulated in 

 comparative statements, and the cost per student 

 of each institution is to be exhibited. 



In the following paragraphs an attempt is made 

 to indicate the more salient features of the in- 

 formation given in the collated statistics, and as 

 these do not, as yet, include the students of 

 Oxford, Cambridge, Trinity College, Dublin, the 

 colleges at Durham, Guy's Hospital Medical 

 School and some other schools of the University 

 of London, and University College, Exeter, sup- 

 plementary figures have been quoted from the 

 192 1 edition of "The Yearbook of the Universi- 

 ties of the British Empire." 



The number of full-time students, as given in 

 the tables, was 37,081, of whom 27 per cent, 

 were women. The total for England alone, 

 20,486, may be analysed topographically as fol- 

 lows, using round numbers : London institutions, 

 8000; North Midland group of universities — Bir- 

 mingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and 

 Sheffield — with the Manchester College of Tech- 

 nology and Nottingham University College, 9300 ; 

 Bristol University, with the Merchant Venturers' 



1 Returns from Universities and University Colleges in Receipt of 

 Treasury Grant, 1919-20. Presented to Parliament by the University 

 Grants Committee, April, 1921. (Cmd. 1263.) 3^. 6rf. 



NO. 2696, VOL. 107] 



Technical College and the University Colleges of 

 Southampton and Reading, 2000; Armstrong Col- 

 I lege and the College of Medicine, Newcastle- 

 upon-Tyne, 1200. The totals for Wales, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland are 2473, 10,992, and 3130 re- 

 spectively. Compared with the returns for 

 I9i3-i4> the numbers show increases of 83, loi, 

 31, and 76 per cent, in England, Wales, Scot- 

 land, and Ireland. 



The results obtained by adding to the above 

 figures statistics from the "Yearbook" may be 

 stated thus : Oxford and Cambridge (including 1 100 

 women), 11,800; London, 10,100; North Mid- 

 lands, 9300; the rest of England, 3400; Scotland 

 and Wales, as above; Ireland, 4500; grand total 

 of full-time students, 52,600. 



In any estimate of the significance of these 

 statistics it is important to bear in mind that a 

 ' very large number of persons engaged in studies 

 ' of university grade are not accounted for either 

 in the Grants Committee's tables — because they 

 I are not students of grant-receiving institutions — 

 ! or in the " Universities' Yearbook " — because they 

 do not belong to any university or university col- 

 lege. The institutions in the United Kingdom in 

 which professional education of university grade 

 is provided, although they are not organically 

 connected with any university — theological col- 

 leges, training colleges, agricultural colleges, 

 schools of mines, etc. — are numerous and im- 

 portant. Moreover, there are many students read- 

 ing privately for the external degrees of the Uni- 

 versity of London, for the Bar, etc. On the other 

 hand, it must be remembered, as pointed out in 

 the Grants Committee's introduction to its 

 returns, that there were in 1919-20 nearly 17,000 

 full-time ex-Service students in attendance at 

 i university institutions in the United Kingdom (in- 

 ! eluding 11,500 attending institutions in receipt of 

 ; Treasury grants), and that when this special 

 source of supply comes to an end there may be 

 a substantial fall in the numbers. 



Again, in any attempt to compare the number 

 of university students in the United Kingdom 

 I with the corresponding number in, for example, 

 i the United States of America, where, in 1918, 

 there were 224,000 men and 151,000 women in 

 672 universities, colleges, and professional 

 schools, It would be necessary to allow for several 

 . Important differences in the conditions of higher 

 education between the countries compared. For 

 example, the work of the higher forms of many 

 of our secondary schools corresponds with the 

 earlier stages of the work done in many of the 

 American colleges and collegiate departments of 

 universities, and In many of the American in- 

 stitutions the enrolment of part-time students con- 

 stitutes a very large proportion of the total 

 number. In France the number of students In 

 i 1913-14 in the University of Paris (17,500) and 

 : the fifteen provincial universities amounted to 

 ' 39,000, but special branches of knowledge, tech- 



