their age and powers to be holding the post in succession fail to obtain promotion when it would be of most value to the University.

The system of pay and pension for Fellows differs in different Colleges at both Universities; in some cases the pay is inadequate and the pensions are non-existent.

Under these conditions, it is beginning to be difficult to keep a sufficient supply of the best men, and it would become increasingly difficult if it were once believed by the younger men that the present conditions would be permanent, owing to a refusal on the part of the State to help the two senior Universities.

For the last two generations the competition of other professions and lines of life has been constantly on the increase. The situation is, indeed, very different from what it was at the time of the previous Royal Commissions. Fellows are now allowed to marry, and in most cases wish to avail themselves of the privilege; and the usual type of "don " is now a person who could command a high salary in many different walks of life. His choice no longer usually lies between the Church and the teaching profession. Well-paid Professorships, all over the English-speaking world, are frequently offered to Oxford and Cambridge men. Excellent business openings are now available to successful students, particularly in science, sometimes with enormous salaries attached.

It is not, indeed, possible or desirable for the Universities to compete pound for pound with offers of this last description ; but a living wage is necessary. People are ready to sacrifice higher salaries and even posts of greater power and influence in order to enjoy the amenities and the intellectual privileges and ideals of life at Oxford and Cambridge. But however anxious they may be to stay, few can do so except on terms enabling them to provide for a family and to educate their children. If this could be done before the war on an income of £500 or £600 a year in middle and later life, it cannot be done on those terms to-day. Each University must be placed in a position to offer to all those who do its work a salary and pension prospects enabling a man to marry and bring up a family, with amenities and advantages of education like those of other professional families. On that condition Oxford and Cambridge will be able in the coming era to keep enough of their best students to do their teaching and research-but not otherwise. That is the principle on which the proposals in this Report are based.

38. The second danger to Oxford and Cambridge is the insufficient number of teachers in proportion to the number of students and the variety of subjects; with the resulting evil of an inadequate amount of time given to research.

The highest type of University education cannot be provided wholesale. If the present number of students, or even the smaller number of students who were being taught in 1914, is in future to be taught without an increased staff, then either

(i) the system of careful, personal instruction of the student by his tutor or supervisor must be abandoned, and much of the educational progress of the last two generations thereby permitted to lapse, or else (ii) research must be starved. The existing resources of Oxford and Cambridge do not suffice to pay both for the tutorial system and for research.*

It is the second of these two evils that is at present chosen. It is research that suffers, except in the scientific schools where research and teaching are so closely interwoven that they flourish or decline together and share whatever funds are available. In the Humane studies, the output of original work of Oxford and Cambridge, if not actually small, is deficient in relation to the intellectual ability of their members, and advanced teaching is not properly provided for.

The supersession of the private "Coach" referred to in paragraphs 15 and 23 above, though a very necessary reform, has had this attendant disadvantage that College teachers of the highest ability are now obliged to give much of their time to elementary instruction which ought to have been obtained before entrance. Research has consequently to suffer a neglect by which, in turn, the higher forms of teaching are impoverished; for the best teacher is one who imparts to his pupils his own sense of the living interest in their common subject; the subject should be regarded not as a fixed body of knowledge, but as a territory increased day by day with the accretion of new discoveries and new speculations. The proper interaction of teaching and research is of the very essence of the highest education.

Our proposals therefore aim at securing an increase in the numbers of the staff, some of whom will, like the new Professors and Readers, be devoted mainly to research and the assistance of researchers; while others will increase the number of the teachers, so that all teachers may have leisure for a certain amount of study, and many for a certain amount of original work.

In particular we desire to see opportunities created for the best of the students to have a period for research after taking the B.A. degree, before they are absorbed for life in the engrossing demands of College teaching and administration.

The evils of the existing state of things in this respect have been very strongly condemned in the recently issued Report of the Prime Minister's Committee on Classical Education (p. 200).

Our proposals by way of remedy will be found below (paragraphs 104 to 118). It is enough here to point out that the necessary improvement cannot be effected on the present income of either University.

* In this Report the word "research" is used to include not only the actual study and collation of new material, or the working out of scientific problems, but also the promotion of thought and learning in the widest sense, including (a) the self-education, study and thought, necessary before a student can decide on the particular branch of a subject for original work best suited to his powers; (b) a constantly renewed familiarity with the discoveries and views of others,. both living and dead; (c) travel for purposes of study.

At the same early and critical period of a man's academical career, it is particularly desirable that he should travel and study abroad. Classics, History, and Modern Languages cannot be properly studied in England alone. The materials as well as the inspiration are largely found oversea. But at present there is neither proper organisation nor sufficient funds for this purpose, with the result that pro tanto the highest classical studies are discouraged, and history is provincialised. It is a disaster that, at a moment when we have become far more deeply involved than ever before in the affairs of countries oversea, our highest academical class is condemned through poverty to know little or nothing of life or learning outside this island.

In advocating further provision for research at Oxford and Cambridge, it must be understood that we do not favour the practice prevailing in Germany and other countries which have imitated her academic system, whereby great numbers of men and women sometimes of the second and third order of mind are encouraged to engage in research, often after an insufficient general education. But in this country many of the best minds are unable, or are not encouraged, to engage in the highest original work for which they are fitted, owing to the deficiencies in this respect of the two senior Universities. This is a serious loss to the nation.

39. It may be relevant at this point to remark that the shortage of teachers and the consequent want of provision and leisure for research has a bearing on the dispute as to the proper length of the terms at Oxford and Cambridge. Complaint is sometimes made that the terms are too short. But many of the teachers plead that the only time they have for study and for original work is in vacation, although too many of them are obliged to devote even their vacations to the preparation of their lectures. It would certainly be disastrous to shorten considerably the period of vacation without largely increasing the number and leisure of the staff. Furthermore, in the interests of the students themselves, it is not desirable unduly to prolong the three regular terms, when debating and other societies, organised athletics and other events and interests, political and philanthropic and intellectual, valuable in themselves as part of education, infringe on the hours of solitary study.

But if and in so far as all the recommendations made in this Report for the further endowment and advancement of research are carried out, including a substantial increase in the number of teachers, we suggest to the Universities that they should endeavour to effect an arrangement by which 24 weeks a year of full term should be reserved in which no examinations are held. by the Universities and Colleges. But in making this proposal we do not desire to see any increase whatever in the number of lectures.

In connection with this question, it must be remembered that at Cambridge there is a "Long Vacation" lasting at least six weeks, during which an increasing number of the students

voluntarily come into residence at very small cost to themselves, and use the libraries and laboratories for quiet study and for revision of what they have been taught during the year. This is particularly desirable for science students requiring laboratories; for many classical, linguistic and historical students travel or study abroad is better, where it can be afforded. The Long Vacation" at Cambridge does not involve heavy demands on the teaching staff, such teaching as is provided in Science being chiefly done by junior teachers, while in the Humanities. there is practically no formal teaching except in Law.

We suggest that opportunities for residence and study shall be equally available during the long vacation to students at Oxford.

40. The third danger arises to the Universities from their present inability to provide new Laboratories and Faculty Rooms when required, or even to keep the existing Libraries and Museums properly staffed and supplied with the new books and material requisite to study and research.

It is sometimes forgotten that, just as Science requires an expensive material outfit, so do Classics, History, Law and Modern Languages depend on the study of an ever fresh supply of books and learned periodicals in all languages. In these days, because new books cost so much, both teachers and students, who are on the average poorer than they used to be, depend more than ever on libraries. And for the same reason the libraries have not the funds to obtain as large a supply of books as they used to obtain year by year before the war. Even the two great University Libraries are in a parlous condition for lack of funds and adequate staff; binding and cataloguing is falling into arrear, and the acquisition of foreign books necessary for students is no longer adequate.

The Archæological and Ethnological Museums, which are an essential part of the teaching apparatus of the Universities, are in similar straits.

Not only are funds for the maintenance of these institutions lacking, but building and expansion, involving acquisition of new sites, are essential for Libraries, Museums, Laboratories and Faculty Rooms, and the Universities have not the funds to meet these necessities.

41. Another danger is inability to develop new subjects of study for lack of funds.

There must, of course, be a limit to such development, and Oxford and Cambridge cannot cover all branches of learning. But if the limitation became too narrow Oxford and Cambridge could not keep their place at the head of the intellectual world of the Empire, as was possible when Classics and Mathematics were considered to cover the main field of study. It has been shown that the two Universities have of recent years started a not wholly inadequate number of new schools, but these are not properly provided for to-day. Our proposals do not contemplate an immediate increase in the number of subjects taught, but are

based on the principle of providing for those now existing. Judging by recent experience, the Universities can be trusted to start new subjects as time and occasion demand, provided they are not now permitted to collapse beneath the financial weight of their present commitments.

42. Another danger is the danger to the accessibility of Oxford and Cambridge to poorer students. If help is not forthcoming from outside, the Universities will be forced to raise their fees to an excessive degree that must exclude many students not only of the artisan but of the professional class. There is a danger that the Universities may, against their will and policy, be forced back by their poverty on to the too exclusive patronage of the wealthy student, irrespective of his ability or industry, in a way that must lower the intellectual standard now attained. The "idle rich" student might revive.

It is, further, quite certain that without financial aid the extra-mural work must languish for want of funds.

The work of the women's Colleges, particularly at Oxford, is also in danger for want of funds. The Oxford women's Colleges have recently appealed to the general public for money to enable them to carry on, but the appeal has met with very inadequate success.

V.-CHARACTER OF THE PROPOSED GRANT.

43. For the reasons given in the foregoing sections, we hold it to be certain that the two Universities will decline in efficiency in the immediate future unless they are able to obtain more money, and that in fact they are only being saved from financial collapse by the Interim Grant of £30,000 a year each which has been allowed to them by Government since the war (see paragraphs 248 and 249 below). Before asking that this Interim Grant be increased and put on a more regular basis, it is necessary to explore the possible alternative modes of obtaining immediate financial relief on a sufficient scale. The obvious alternatives that suggest themselves are

(i) Increased fees.

(ii) Increased contributions from the Colleges to the University. (iii) Private benefaction.

We do not believe that sufficient immediate relief can be obtained in any of these ways, though the third ultimately involves the chief hope of the Universities in the future.

(i) Increased fees are being levied by some Colleges and by the Universities for some purposes, and this process will in some cases have to be carried further. But if the attempt were made to rely on this method to relieve the general financial situation, the tendency would be to turn Oxford and Cambridge into "rich