NA TORE 



577 



THURSDAY, APRIL 



1893- 



THE NEW UNIVERSITY FOR LONDON. 



THE long procession of witnesses which for months 

 past has been defiling before the " Gresham Univer- 

 sity Commission " has at length come to an end. The 

 Commissioners are now, we suppose, engaged in con- 

 structing a scheme for the constitution of the University. 

 Their manner of performing the first portion of their task 

 has been open to criticism. More may be heard here- 

 after of the extraordinary refusal to furnish the witnesses 

 with copies of their own evidence, and of the still 

 more remarkable fact that, though the majority were 

 denied copies of what they themselves had said, excep- 

 tions were made in the case of certain favoured persons 

 who were allowed to see and to contradict the evidence 

 of others. 



While the Commission has been sitting several 

 schemes for the constitution of the new University have 

 been proposed. In spite of certain important differences 

 there is one most important point on which they are 

 {generally in accord. It is not too much to say that — 

 with no more exceptions than are necessary to prove the 

 rule — every one interested in the future development of 

 the higher education in London agrees that there should 

 be but one university in the metropolis, and that it should 

 not (as was proposed in the discredited Gresham scheme) 

 be a loose federation of competing colleges. It cannot 

 be too strongly urged that the object of a university is the 

 promotion and the diffusion of learning, not the ag- 

 grandisement of educational institutions. Every student 

 in London who can pass the prescribed examinations 

 can at present obtain a degree. No change in existing 

 arrangements need be made unless it can be shown by 

 some other method students could be attracted in greater 

 numbers, or could be turned out at the end of their 

 university careers with a greater mastery of the branches 

 of knowledge which they have studied. These ends will 

 not be attained by giving to the existing colleges the 

 right to agree among themselves as to the conditions on 

 which degrees are to be bestowed, and leaving the existing 

 university as a rival whom they will immediately be 

 tempted to undersell. If public money were bestowed on 

 such a university it would merely be scrambled for by 

 the constituent colleges, and would be spent in a rivalry 

 in which the minimum advantage to learning would be 

 produced by the maximum waste of funds. 



If London is to have a University worthy of the name, 

 if Parliament, the City Companies, and the London 

 County Council are to provide it with the means abso- 

 lutely necessary for its proper equipment, the University 

 must be endowed with powers which will enable it to 

 fashion the Colleges to meet the needs of London. It 

 must be freed from, not fettered and hampered by, the 

 necessity of maintaining in precisely their present 

 form arrangements which are themselves in large 

 measure the result of the religious animosities of fifty 

 years ago. 



Hut while this fundamental fact must in every way be 

 NO. 1225, VOL. 47l 



insisted on, it would, of course, be absurd to attempt to 

 compel the governing bodies of existing institutions to 

 surrender all their rights off hand, or to treat as hostile 

 men who have been doing their best for the public good 

 amid great difficulties and with too little public sympathy. 

 We cannot, therefore, but hope that the Commission 

 may recommend, and the Colleges accept, some such 

 plan as that recently proposed by the Professorial 

 Association. 



In this scheme a praiseworthy attempt has been made 

 to combine a rigid insistance on the conditions necessary 

 for the future success of the University, with a due regard 

 for the susceptibilities of the Colleges out of which it 

 will in part be constituted. It is proposed that the 

 Governing Body shall consist of the Chancellor and 

 the Vice-Chancellor, and twenty-five Professors (each of 

 whom shall be elected annually by the Professors of a 

 definite group of cognate subjects), together with fourteen 

 members nominated by the Crown, four members nomi- 

 nated by its Corporation and the London County 

 Council, three representatives of Convocation, and four 

 members, not being teachers in the University, nomi- 

 nated by the Governing Body itself. 



The last provision would enable the Court — as the 

 Governing Body is called — to give temporary orpermanent 

 representation to public or semi-public bodies which it 

 might be desirable to attach to the University. It is also 

 proposed that the arrangements between the University 

 and the existing colleges shall be negociated by a 

 Statutory Commission with very wide powers, subject 

 always to the condition that every Professor of the 

 University, wherever he may teach, shall be appointed 

 and paid by the University. To this Commission is en- 

 trusted the task of selecting in the first instance the 

 fourteen members of the Court, whose successors will be 

 nominated by the Crown. The choice is to be made 

 " from among the existing members of the Senate of the 

 University of London, and from members of the 

 governing bodies of those colleges which may be incor- 

 porated, in such proportion as may seem advisable to the 

 Commission, having regard to the importance of the 

 vested interests involved, and to the magnitude of the 

 educational resources which may be placed by each at 

 the disposal of the new University. These initial ap- 

 pointments are to last for ten years, and at the end of ten 

 years, or in the event of vacancy through death or 

 resignation, the appointments are to be made by the 

 Crown." Subject to the general control of the Court the 

 Professors of the University are to have charge of all 

 purely educational matters. 



The colleges named as those which it is desirable 

 to bring into connection with the University are (in 

 alphabetical order) Bedford College, the Central Insti- 

 tution of the City and Guilds Institute, Gresham College, 

 King's College, the Medical Schools, the Royal College 

 of Science, and University College, while there are other 

 institutions, especially those giving instruction in Fine 

 Arts and in Law, with which it may be possible for the 

 University to establish relations. It is also proposed 

 that the University should have the power to appoint or 

 to recognise teachers giving instruction of a more or less 

 academic character at institutions or colleges, the objects 



1; I) 



