NATURE 



181 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1917. 



UNIVERSITIES AND THE SUPPLY OF 

 RESEARCH WORKERS. 

 ^~\NE of the most important matters to which 

 ^-^ the Department of Scientific and Industrial 

 Research has to give close attention is the supply 

 of research workers by our universities and 

 colleges, X Military necessity has reduced the 

 number — already small — of students being trained 

 in research methods at these institutions; and 

 an inquiry shows that the output of such students 

 must be greatly increased after the war if suffi- 

 cient men are to be available to widen the founda- 

 tions of our staple industries by the application 

 of scientific knowledge. People are accustomed 

 to think of universities as educational institutions 

 only, whereas the essential standard of value, and 

 the measure of their greatness, is the worth of 

 their contributions to the growth of knowledge. 



This principle was set forth very decidedly in the 

 report of the Duke of Devonshire's Royal Com- 

 mission on Scientific Instruction and the Advance- 

 ment of Science more than forty years ago. 



" On no point," said the Commissioners, " are 

 the witnesses whom we have examined more 

 united than they are in the expression of the feel- 

 ing that it is the primary duty of the universities 

 to assist in the advancement of learning and 

 science, and not to be content with the position of 

 merely educational bodies. We entirely concur with 

 the impression thus conveyed to us by the evidence, 

 and we are of opinion that the subject is one to 

 which it is impossible to call attention too strongly. 

 We think that if the universities should fail to 

 recognise the duty of promoting original research, 

 they would be in danger of ceasing to be centres 

 of intellectual activity, and a means of advancing 

 science would be lost sight of which, in this 

 country, could not easily be supplied in any other 

 way." 



At the time when these words were written 

 scientific research was all but dead in England ; 

 and so far as the advancement of knowledge was 

 concerned we occupied the position of a third- or 

 fourth-rate Power. Scientific men were convinced 

 that action was urgently needed in order to pro- 

 mote the future development of our national 

 industries, but neither the State nor the old 

 universities to which the appeal was made took 

 any steps to remedy the existing condition of 

 things. The result is that, whereas we should 

 have had hundreds of research workers trained 

 in university institutions and making their 

 influence felt afterwards in industrial works for a 

 couple of generations, their numbers have had to 

 be counted in tens. 



NO. 2506, VOL. 100] 



The State b^an to accept its responsibility for 

 providing facilities for university education and 

 research when in 1889 the House of Commons 

 decided to recognise university colleges as national 

 institutions by voting 15,000/. for distribution 

 among them. This grant, which was recom- 

 mended for the London colleges and Owens 

 College, Manchester, by the Devonshire Com- 

 mission in 1874, was increased to 25,000/. in 1897, 

 in addition to a grant of 12,000/. to the three 

 University Colleges of Wales. In 1904, a lai^e 

 and influential deputation urged upon Mr. Balfour, 

 then Prime Minister, the need for further assist- 

 ance to university education and research ; and in 

 announcing that the grant would at once be 

 doubled, as well as redoubled in the following year, 

 Mr. Balfour stated that the increase, which repre- 

 sented a capital sum of 3,000,000/. at 2^ per cent., 

 was given as the result of the appeal made in 

 1903 by Sir Norman Lockyer in his presidential 

 address to the British Association at Southport. 

 Ten years later, in 1914, the Exchequer grants to 

 universities and colleges in England and Wales 

 amounted to 201,000/. : the stages of growth by 

 which this sum has been reached are shown 

 graphically in the diagram on p. 182. 



It cannot be said, even now, that the funds at 

 the disposal of our modern universities are suffi- 

 cient to ensure the supply of advanced students 

 and research workers demanded by the conditions 

 of industrial development and the competition of 

 other countries. There must be an increase in the 

 number of scholarships from secondary schools 

 to universities, and every inducement should be 

 offered to promising students to train for research 

 as a post-graduate study. 



The Consultative Committee of the Board of 

 Education, in a report on scholarships for higher 

 education, published last year, estimated that the 

 cost of the additional scholarships and other forms 

 of endowment advised in the report would be 

 about 340,000/. a year. It was recommended 

 that the State provide, at an estimated annual 

 cost of 67,500/., about 250 scholarships for 

 students from secondary schools who intend to 

 pursue scientific or technical subjects at the 

 universities, these scholarships to be awarded by 

 the universities themselves, and to be renewable 

 for a year or more after the conclusion of a 

 degree course, upon the recommendation of a 

 professor at the university, for the purposes of 

 research in some branch of science or tech- 

 nology. An annual sum of 20,000/. was estimated 

 to be required for these research scholarships. 



The recommendations of the Consultative 

 Committee have not yet been ^cted upon ; but the 

 scheme of the Committee of the Privy Council 



L 



