248 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



Manchester, for example, students who have matriculated are examined 

 for the ordinary' degree uf B.Sc. iu two parts — ^namely, the Intermediate 

 and the Final. To sit for the Intermediate examination, candidates must 

 attend a course of study at the University extending over at least one 

 academic year in three of six defined science subjects, and must pass in 

 either the three subjects at the same examination, or two subjects at one 

 and the third at a subsequent examination. For the Final examination 

 for the ordinary B.Sc, candidates must take two subjects, which are more 

 specialised than at the Intermediate stage. 



Training in all the subjects prescribed is spread over at least one 

 academic year at each stage, and the examinations in all are held in one 

 bunch at the end of the year or two years. 



As the result of this system, students attend on the same day three and 

 sometimes more lectures on distinct subjects, in different departments, 

 and under separate professors ; they may put in two or three hours of 

 laboratory work in two unrelated branches each day. 



This is the commonly recognised imiversity system of training for 

 the Science first degree in this country : it is assumed to be a suitable 

 system, and those of us who have been compelled to spend some years in 

 administration, requiring a rapid transfer of thought and action from oni 

 question to another of a^quite unlike nature, realise that, for the develop 

 ment of mental fitness, the compound diet provided each day at both 

 schools and universities has some strengthening qualities. But one rarely 

 finds on inquiry among university teachers any real consciousness that 

 the system is the product of a definite design or attempt to put into 

 practice any recognised principles of education. University authorities 

 assume, however, that to pass an examination in two or more subjects at 

 the same time requires more mental nimbleness than when, as in tht 

 tandem system, the final examinations are taken at the end of each course 

 in one subject only. This may be a simple guide for universities that have 

 a strong external side and are thus driven to regard examinations as their 

 only test. But the passing of examinations is not the only or, indeed, the 

 ideal object of the university. 



During the last four years, since returning from an intensive form of 

 complex, semi-political administration to the more uniform atmosphere of 

 academic life, in which barometric pressures are less liable to sudden 

 variation, I have made a point of soliciting from experienced university 

 teachers an estimate of the relative merits, as educational methods, of 

 the commonly followed compound system on the one hand and of the 

 so-called tandem system on the other as practised at South Kensington. 

 My impressions have been gathered from witnesses who have followed 

 approximately similar courses of training themselves ; for most of the 

 professors at South Kensington had been through the older universities 

 and thus were themselves brought up on a mixed diet. Some of my 

 colleagues confess to a clear recollection of coming to South Kensington 

 with a definite prejudice against our system ; but there is not one among 

 them now who would give up the tandem system for that which is the 

 commonly accepted practice elsewhere in this country. 



The question was forced upon us recently in our attempt to persuada 

 the University of London to accept our training and examinations for 



