252 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
No modern university can have anything of the freedom of a medieval 
university. The medieval university stood alone ; the modern university 
is part of a great educational system which embraces the whole community. 
It cannot control the lower ranges of this system—the elementary and 
secondary schools—or demand that the work done in those ranges shall 
be simply preparatory to its own work as conceived and determined by 
itself ; for a majority of the students in the lower ranges will never come to 
the universities, and their studies must be organised as ends in themselves, 
and not as means or propzdeutics to work in the university. The 
university has to adjust itself to the educational system, and not the 
educational system to itself. That educational system is the result of a 
social ideal, and that social ideal is in the last resort defined by Parliament. 
The university is therefore bound to conform to the social ideal adopted 
by Parliament and expressed in the educational system. It has the one 
consolation of hoping that by its thinking and teaching it is a great force 
in forming the social ideal by which it is itself controlled. In English- 
speaking countries, at any rate, the final authority of the State is not 
an enemy to the freedom of the university. A much more dangerous 
enemy is social interests, especially when they are backed by the power 
of cash. We may not believe in more than 3 of the argument of The 
Goose Step, in which Mr. Upton Sinclair draws his lurid picture of the 
bogey of social interests. But even with a discount of 3, or more, he is 
alarming. 
It is a saying current in universities—and, I dare say, everywhere else— 
that finance determines policy. It is certainly true that the methods by 
which a university secures its revenue cannot be without effect on the 
freedom with which it develops its policy of education. In no university 
—not even in Oxford and Cambridge—does the student pay the whole, 
or anything like the whole, of the cost of his education. In the newer 
English universities we may say that, on the average, the student provides 
735 of the cost of the running of his university. The remaining ;% has 
to be found from other sources. Before we look at those other sources, we 
may venture on a general observation. The persons or bodies who provide 
the required 4, may be inspired by a variety of motives. We may put 
first the motive of advancing the cause of truth and promoting the higher 
education of the best minds of the community. But we must allow for 
the entry of other motives. A university is, we may say, a great pulpit ; 
and there will also be some who desire to ‘ tune the pulpits,’ and to make 
the preachers say acceptable things. ‘It is another current saying that 
those who pay the piper call the tune. We should be shutting our eyes 
to a genuine danger if we did not admit the possibility of ‘tuning.’ And 
if we regard it as an undesirable possibility, we must be ready with sugges- 
tions for its avoidance or, at any rate, its diminution. 
There are three possible sources of university revenues. One is the 
fees of students : a second is private benefaction : a third is public assist- 
ance, whether from the national or the local authority. It is a desirable 
thing that universities should continue to draw an income from the fees 
of their students. It is earned income: it is independent money. It 
is good both for the university and its student, making the one feel that it 
earns as well as spends, and the other that he gives as well as receives. 
It is indeed a pity that any system of fees should exclude a single student 
