, [_ PRteSlDKNtlAL ADDRESS. 345 



Universities. It completely hides any door at which the reforming postman 

 might wish to knock. The people who want things done become shy, em- 

 barrassed, and intimidated by the people who ' know.' If you want anyone 

 to take in a suggestion you have to seek what an Italian dramatist has called 

 'la porta di dietro.' 



Somehow or other you must get at the Colleges as well as the University. 

 Otherwise you may find yourself addressing the Vice-Chancellor on a subject 

 which is the concern of the Colleges, or addressing the College tutor upon some- 

 thing over which he has no control. For those who know, of course, the 

 explanation is quite simple. The schoolmasters do not want Greek to be com- 

 pulsory in the entrance examinations of the Universities. We are told that at 

 Oxford, and it is equally true of Cambridge, the University has no entrance 

 examination at all, from which it would appear that the headmasters were at 

 least very ill-informed about the Universities whose practice they wished to 

 modify. "Yet the headmasters know perfectly well that their boys, at any rate, 

 have to pass an entrance examination before they can be admitted to either 

 University. 



What is true, for Cambridge at least, is that the University qua University 

 lias no examination for entrance; it is obliged by its statutes to accept as a 

 member without any question anyone presented by the recognised authority 

 of a College, regardless altogether of his qualification or disqualification for a 

 University career. It is a very remarkable arrangement. The University makes 

 no inquiry as to a student's fitness to profit by the educational system of the 

 University : it leaves all that to the Colleges, and many, if not all, of the Colleges 

 have an entrance examination. So I offer this paradox for the logician who 

 is interested in higher education. 



The University consists of the members of its constituent Colleges and a 

 few others. At the discretion of the several Colleges, or the non-collegiate 

 students' board, seventy-five per cent, of the members of the University are 

 required to pass an entrance examination before they are accepted for presenta- 

 tion to the University for matriculation. There are at least four examinations 

 of the University which are accepted by Colleges on occasions in lieu of their 

 own entrance examinations. Yet there is no extrance examination for the 

 University. 



And this does not end the matter. The University becomes a controlling 

 body rather than an educational institution with a definite purpose and pro- 

 gramme. The regulations for its students are nearly all of them of a negative 

 character. The discipline and the regimen of the University rest upon the 

 assumption that a student desires to secxu'e from the University not so much 

 attainment as a stamp for his attainments. A member of the University can- 

 not be admitted to a degree imless he has satisfied certain conditions of residence 

 and also satisfies certain examiners ; his name is not accepted for the final 

 examination unless he has satisfied certain other examiners. There is nothing 

 in the regulations or administration of the Universitj' to secure that a matricu- 

 lated student shall study, or aspire to take a degree. He might live on in 

 idleness and ignorance for the rest of his natural life ; the University has 

 no choice in the matter so long as his College paj^s the periodical fees. It 

 trusts to the Colleges to see that idle or imsuitable undergraduates are invited 

 to go elsewhere. 



Here we have one of the many instances of the division of jurisdiction 

 between the Colleges and the University which hides the ideals of our system of 

 higher education in an impenetrable fog. 



The University is governed by the Colleges according to a system which goes 

 back to the time when the 'Merchant of Venice' was written, so let us revert 

 to the conversation between Portia and Nerissa which expounds the lottery 

 of the caskets in the well-known scene. The position of the University in the 

 matter of the selection or rejection of its members is exactly that wliich Portia 

 bewailed to Nerissa. Let me invite you to regard the episode of the caskets 

 as a figurative representation of the lottery by which the University of Cam- 

 bridge selects those upon whom she bestows her inherited riches — ' lucem et 

 pocula sacra.' Cambridge, like Portia, the heiress of all the learning of the 

 good and the great, bound by the fantasy of her ancestral tradition never to 

 choose for herself. 



