NATURE 



241 



THURSDAY, JULY 26, 1877 



A MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY 



THE movement of the authorities of Owens College, 

 represented in their memorial to the Duke of 

 Richmond on Friday last, is certainly one of the 

 healthiest important educational advances of recent years. 

 It is an outcome of an impatience of pure examination 

 and a revived belief in the educative influences of asso- 

 ciation of young men with each other and with masters 

 of the subjects in which they happen to be interested, 

 which have been gradually but surely growing up among 

 educationalists. 



Like a few hundreds of other institutions, including 

 Oxford, Cambridge, and the Scotch Universities, Owens 

 College is affiliated to the University of London. Twenty 

 years ago this meant that only students of these institu- 

 tions could present themselves for London degrees. But 

 their members multiplied — and every weaker member 

 added to the list of affiliated colleges supplied a new 

 reason for still farther widening the bounds of the Uni- 

 versity. It was natural that in time the outsiders educated 

 at home, with private tutors, or in unrecognised and un- 

 affiliated institutions should knock at the doors of [the 

 university and demand admission. After they did, it was 

 found in the end impossible to refuse them. Since that 

 date the University examines everybody, wherever he has 

 been educated, and its influence is to assimilate what 

 one may call organised institutions of individuality and 

 character to the unorganised or semi-organised types of 

 the crammer's school or the private student of cram books. 

 For the school or the private student it has, been and 

 still is of the utmost value. For higher colleges it is 

 a great centralisation, objectionable only because it is 

 not complete, not having really swallowed up the Scotch 

 and Irish universities as well as Oxford and Cambridge. 

 Mr. Lowe's ideal doubtless is that the most intelligent, 

 impartial, perhaps bloodless of examiners, selected from 

 all the world, should prescribe the subjects of examina- 

 tion, and should thereby dictate from the standpoint of the 

 highest human omniscience, the courses of all teaching 

 institutions, and should, like Minos, ^-Eacus, and Rhada- 

 manthus, decide in final award the character and place in 

 the universe alike of teacher and of taught. This ideal 

 has been realised in the Chinese empire, and man)- 

 excellent arguments can be stated in its favour. It is 

 inadequately realised in this country, because all incor- 

 porated universities have been left practically outside of 

 the scheme. Owens College is the first of the non-incor- 

 porated actual or possible universities which asks also to 

 be released. 



It is possible to offer the petitioners something they do 

 not seek. Owens and other residence colleges object to 

 be controlled by a mere examining board. But there are 

 Universities like Oxford and Cambridge which are not mere 

 examining boards, which have resident students, where 

 the examiners are in frequent and living contact with the 

 students, from whom, indeed, they are often removed 

 only by a few additional years. Five years before, the 

 men who preside over the triposes may have them 

 Vol, XVI. — No. 404 



Selves sat for examination. Might not Oxford or Cam- 

 bridge supply a less narrow and technical examination 

 than London ? Could these universities not affiliate 

 Owens College to themselves in some more living bond 

 than has now become possible elsewhere ? 



There is an excellent and all but final answer. 

 Oxford was asked to do it for King's College, London, 

 and after mature deliberation it deliberately declined. 

 Probably it could not see its way to work out this 

 more living association. There is one kind practicable 

 — such as Oxford and Cambridge practise between them- 

 selves. A man may count a certain number of terms at 

 Cambridge for his degree at Oxford, ju5t as he may 

 count so many sessions at Edinburgh for his degree at 

 Glasgow. There is another kind conceivable. The 

 teachers of both places may be associated with each 

 other, with or without outside examiners, for the exami- 

 nation of the students of both, and the programmes of 

 examination, and to some extent of teaching, may thus 

 be settled in common. Oxford was not willing to asso- 

 ciate itself with King's College in either of these ways, 

 and there is no reason to believe that it would care so 

 to associate itself with Owens College or any other insti- 

 tution. Such an association would imply an equality 

 which the older universities can scarcely be asked to 

 admit ; and the second mode of association would 

 institute a sort of outside interference with them which 

 they would never allow. The simplest and most 

 satisfactory university is self-contained, teaching and 

 examining its own men under the stimulus of rivalry 

 and public criticism, and with the help, perhaps, of 

 outside examiners. Oxford and Cambridge see no 

 reason why they should descend from their own secure 

 and satisfactory position and tempt the dangers of con- 

 federation. 



It remains to ask what good it can and what harm it 

 might do to grant the prayer of the petitioners. The 

 first question need scarcely be answered. It is an 

 obvious advantage to every district to have a great centre 

 of high thinking and noble living planted in its midst. 

 But there is an equally obvious disadvantage in the 

 undue multiplication of universities. There may be 

 serious objections, as Prof. Huxley puts it, to any official 

 system of branding our young herrings with B.A. or 

 M.A. But so long as we keep to the system of branding 

 we ought not to be too free with our brands. There ought 

 not to be too many, and there are a good many in the 

 United Kingdom with no means of telling which is a good 

 brand and which is a bad one. There is no doubt that, 

 as far as it goes, the objection is sound, and that we 

 ought not to have too many degree-granting bodies. 

 The question is whether we have — whether the precise 

 limit at which we ought to stop has been reached — 

 whether the new claimant is not as fully entitled as some 

 of the old-established institutions to an independent 

 status and existence. In England we have very few 

 branding bodies, and every guarantee is offered by the 

 Manchester authorities that their brand will be of the 

 very first quality. They propose to have outside asses- 

 sors to help them to see to it ; the one thing they ask is 

 that having the responsibility of teaching they shall have 

 an equal share in directing the examinations. It seems a 

 reasonable and modest request. 







