remains true to-day. The conditions of Cambridge sidered desirable, (vii) The tying up of "close Fellowships. 66 to particular schools, districts, or families was abolished on the advice of the Commissioners with completely good results. The similar opening out of most (though not all) scholarships to free competition from the whole country was advantageous in the main, because it has undoubtedly served to raise the general intellectual level of scholarships and therefore of the Universities and Colleges. But the destruction of local connections was not an un. mixed blessing in the case of scholarships, because these locally limited scholarships had offen proved the means of bringing up from humble schools very poor boys who could not compete in the open against the more expensively educated scholars of the wealthier " Public Schools." Other causes tended in the same direction. The insistence of the two Universities on Greek in Responsions and the Previous Examination did not prevent a tendency for Greek teaching to disappear from Grammar Schools, as a result of the policy of the Charity Commissioners. The avenue from the Grammar Schools to the two senior Universities was thereby seriously impeded. The amount of Greek required was indeed not very considerable, and might be worked up" in a few months by an able man, but the insistence on Greek had a psychological effect in spreading the idea that Oxford and Cambridge were not a natural sequel to education in some of the humbler schools. The voluntary abolition of the Greek language as a necessary subject in the Previous Examination by Cambridge in 1919, and in Responsions by Oxford in 1920, has laid this question to rest. And the recent growth of Local Education Authority Scholarships and of State Scholarships has more than compensated for what loss accrued from the abolition of close local scholarships of the old type. Meanwhile, the intellectual standard of scholarship attainment had been raised, to the general advantage. 66 Another cause tending, towards the middle of the last century. to reduce the number of students with small means was the *Half the scholarships of King's were opened by the Commissioners to non-Etonians. A majority of the scholarships at New College are still tied to Winchester, and there are many other close scholarships still remaining (see complete list in Table C. 9 in Appendix 3). abolition of the practice under which poor students earned a livelihood in the Universities by acting as servants to Fellows or doing other menial work. This old-world practice had had its uses as long as it was congenial to the sentiment of more feudal times, but it grated on the sense of equality and intellectual fraternity which became in the Victorian era an essential part of the spirit of the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. This spirit insisted, during the same period, on the abolition of distinctive dress and privileges for noble and wealthy students as such. The prevailing idea of the legislators of 1850-82 was to raise the intellectual level by free competition. In this they succeeded, to the great advantage of Universities and nation, and to the particular advantage of the cleverest sons of professional men of small means. The majority of those who obtained scholarships could not have come to the University without financial aid. Nevertheless, the Commissioners may perhaps have paid too little attention to the way in which open competition might detrimentally affect some of the more distinctively poor and those educated on other than public school lines. Oxford, however, in 1868, and Cambridge in 1869 reestablished the Non-Collegiate system, chiefly for the benefit of poorer men. In spite of the Greek test, in spite of the loss of old local connections, in spite of the abolition of menial employments, the number of poor undergraduates was on the increase from the middle of the last century onwards, especially as the total numbers of Oxford and Cambridge students very quickly increased. During the last generation there has been a rapid rise in the number and proportion of students of moderate and even of very slender means, and there are not a few cases now-a-days of students with no independent means at all. II. SELF-REFORM AND DEVELOPMENT SINCE THE LAST ROYAL COMMISSION. 19. Since the framing of the Statutes of 1882 the Universities and Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge have been left alone to govern and develop themselves. They had not only been reformed by Parliament, but had been given greater power and facilities to alter their Statutes and to keep themselves abreast of needful change. An estimate of the use which they have made of the last forty years under these new conditions is essential to the purpose of our present enquiry. Oxford and Cambridge are totally different places from the establishments reported on in 1850-2. Yet so persistent is the impression left on the public mind by their historic past, of which the trappings and outward form are still largely preserved, that it is believed in many quarters that "dons" and undergraduates at the two senior Universities are still following much the same courses of studies and living the same kind of lives as when the first Commissioners penetrated into their midst. The actual facts are very different. "Dons," whether Professorial or Collegiate, are in close and constant intercourse with undergraduates. The personal instruction of students by College teachers has been carried to the farthest reasonable limit in the great majority of subjects. Most of the Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates are serious and hard-working students, if not entirely divested on all occasions of the exuberance natural to congregated youth. A large and increasing proportion of these students are poor men, maintained at the University out of College endowments, public grants, loans or personal assistance, yet the poorer men are so much a part of the social life of Colleges that their greater or less means, their more or less humble origin are things indifferent and unnoticed. Oxford and Cambridge have entered on a great work of education outside their own walls, in connection with Extension Lectures and Tutorial Classes. Inside their own walls they have advanced and are daily advancing, as far as their limited resources permit, to make the whole range of modern learning and science their province. They have trained up a great proportion of the leading men in almost all learned subjects, humane and scientific, and have sent out from their midst many of the leaders of public life and administrators of distant parts of the Empire. Increase in number of students. 20. We have seen that one of the defects of the eighteenth century was the small number of students in residence. The number of future clerics was of necessity fairly constant, but so little preparation was given for other professions and walks in life that few others, except a certain number of the sons of the squirearchy and nobility, were attracted within the walls of what were then the only two Universities in England and Wales. In the first 25 years of the nineteenth century numbers rose fast, probably in consequence of the increase of national wealth and population; but the numbers were still lamentably small in proportion to the endowments when the Commissioners began their enquiries in 1850. The legislation of 1854-6 helped to send the numbers up, and the ever rising tide of national prosperity, coupled with the admission of Dissenters and the progress in new subjects and new methods of teaching and research, especially the development of Science, resulted in a constant increase in the number of students, which has fortunately also meant a raising of the standard of acquirement necessary for entry. The total number of students in residence (men and women), below the degree of M.A., had risen in Michaelmas Term, 1913, to 3,460 at Oxford and 4,078 at Cambridge, and in the corresponding term of 1920 to 4,651 and 5,733 respectively. The growing belief in the value of University education must be held in part responsible for the increase of numbers since the war. The following figures relating to matriculations show the variations in the number of new entries at different stages in the past. MATRICULATIONS.* From the Oxford Historical Register, the Cambridge Historical Register, and the records of Women's Colleges. N.B. The total number of students under instruction at one time is about three times the number of matriculations in a October, 1920-October, 1921, may be taken as a valuable indication of the growth of the number of matriculations, because the numbers are no longer swollen appreciably by the abnormal influx of ex-service students assisted to come up by Government in the years immediately following the war. The matriculations for 1920-1 contained very few of this class, and probably represent fairly well the situation in a normal post-war year. Whether this extreme pressure of numbers will continue or abate is one of the uncertainties of the situation. At present the pressure is so great that on the one hand the Colleges are able to select and reject; the College entrance examination is tending to become competitive, eliminating the idle rich" and the less * The figures relating to women in this table give the number of new entries, not matriculations. Estimated number. 66 In the academical year 1920-21, 1,521 women matriculated at Oxford in consequence of the grant of University membership to women in the preceding year, but this number is wholly abnormal and includes not only the great majority of students, whether senior or freshmen, resident during the year, but also a large number who had previously gone down. The number of women students who entered Oxford for the first time in 1920-21, was 260, including 117 members of the Society of Home Students. able candidates. On the other hand the staffs of the Colleges and Universities are heavily overworked in many cases, and research is suffering. Either (i) The number of students must be decreased, or (ii) the staffs must be increased, or (iii) the standard of learning and education must be allowed to go down. But the Universities have not only grown in numbers but have extended the field from which their students come. They now draw not only from a greater variety of classes in this island. but from an extended geographical area. Since the war the movement which is bringing to Oxford and Cambridge increasing numbers of graduate students from the Empire, America and foreign countries, has become of great importance. This is referred to again in other parts of the Report. At Oxford the system of scholarships founded under the will of Cecil Rhodes, which has operated since 1903, brings a constant stream of students both from the Empire and from the United States, a large proportion of whom take the ordinary undergraduate course. Already 1,039 such students have matriculated, and the normal number in residence falls not far short of 200. The influx of students from overseas is having an interesting effect on some studies: Roman-Dutch Law and Colonial History are recent examples. 21. Changes in Studies. (i) Oxford. 66 The oldest of the Oxford Schools are those of Literae Humaniores and of Mathematics, which remained the only Honour Schools from 1807 until 1853. That of "Literae Humaniores "-or "Greats," as it is often popularly termed— has always enjoyed an acknowledged primacy in the University, not alone in virtue of its seniority and of the fact that down to the close of the nineteenth century it outstripped the other Schools in numbers, but still more because it is regarded, both within and outside the University, as peculiarly characteristic of Oxford, and because of the large number of able and distinguished Oxford men who have passed through it. The School, while including in a subsidiary position papers on Greek and Latin translation and composition, is mainly concerned with Philosophy and Ancient History. Both these subjects are studied concurrently by all candidates, though it is inevitable, and indeed desirable, that a student should devote somewhat greater attention to one or the other in accordance with his temperament and his training; the variety of individual interests. is also recognised and encouraged by the wide choice of optional special subjects which may be offered. The value of the philosophical side of the School, which embraces Political Philosophy as well as Ethics, Logic, and Metaphysics, is proved not only by the part which it plays in |