Mr. T.S. Eliot has recently written that universities ‘should stand for the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom.’ As Mr. Eliot is well aware, he is saying nothing new; he is echoing the views expressed by those eminent men who wrote on the subject in the last century—Whewell, Newman, Mark Pattison, and others. When it is asked how universities should attempt to fulfil these purposes, we find that we are launched on a discussion of vast dimensions. All that can be done in a short article is to mention two or three topics falling within this field of discourse.

A Community of Teachers and Scholars

The first topic may be introduced the following way. We often hear a graduate saying that he was educated at a particular university. We often hear a university teacher saying that he taught So-and-so when the latter was a student. But we never hear a university teacher saying that he educated So-and-so. To say that would be obviously presumptuous. The inference is plain and important. Students, like other people, must educate themselves.

Broadly speaking, a university can and should do two things, in connection with providing educational opportunities. The first is to create conditions under which a closely knit student society or community can arise. The importance of this is to be found in the fact, so much emphasised by Newman, that education largely comes about by the association of students one with another. The second is to facilitate and encourage all those activities and interests of students, whether pursued singly or in common, which are part of education. While the inadequacies of universities in relation to these two things must be admitted, the universities may fairly say that it is lamentable that so few students use fully such chances as they have. In this matter of education, students must take the initiative. They must deliberately seek to widen their interest, sympathies, and understanding, to explore literature, the arts and philosophy. And they must exert themselves in more than dilettante fashion.

It is equally the duty of students to learn as teaching is the duty of a university. Our scheme of studies is planned on specialist and not on general lines. A specialist scheme of study is often criticised; it is said that such a scheme is narrow. In one sense this is obviously true. The inference is then drawn that such a course of study is narrowing in its influence upon students; but this is not necessarily true at all. We construct on specialist lines because it is only through intense study in a limited field that a student can come to understand what real knowledge of anything is—thorough, accurate, detailed, objective, comprehensive knowledge. I do not mean that within three years a student can attain to real knowledge of his chosen field; but he can come to understand what real knowledge is—to recognise and appreciate it whenever he comes across it. This ability to distinguish between real knowledge and half knowledge is an acquisition the value of which it is hard to overestimate; moreover, it is something seldom learnt outside universities, and therefore one of the greatest gifts which a university can bestow. In the truest sense of the phrase, this is a widening experience.

Hideous Romanticism?

It is useful to distinguish between teaching and training. By training in this context is meant instruction in a method, and in any university course there must be some training—training in methods of acquiring knowledge. But training is also needed for the practice of professions. We have the fact that our degrees are not tickets of entry into privileged reserves; our graduates are not certified as able to render special services needed by the public. They have got to prove that what they have gained during their university course has made them more valuable members of society than they would have otherwise been. And how can they prove it? By showing that they have a wide angle of vision, are flexible in mind, are open to new idea, can think accurately, are both intellectually discipline and intellectually adventurous, and above all, that they possess that modesty which should characterise anyone who has ever grappled with the fundamental problems discussed in universities.

The Special Place of the University

Today, universities stand well—very well—in the eyes of the public. The universities are regarded by the public as power-houses whence the state derives energy to solve its pressing problems. When we look round, we see that the universities have become centres of ceaseless activity in the region of contemporary affairs; their staffs are reservoirs upon which the state draws when it looks for men to serve on commissions and committees, as advisors and consultants, and in many other capacities. But is it not possible that the universities are valued for wrong or irrelevant reasons, even that they are straying somewhat from their rightful path? Certainly the young people and their advisers, parents and schoolmasters, tend to have quite other views about the functions of universities and to regard them as gates into well-paid occupations. Nevertheless such views are not necessarily altogether mistaken; it is proper to hope that the recruits to the better-paid occupations, which in general are the more responsible and influential, will be drawn from among those who have been members of a university striving to carry out its true functions. As to the universities themselves—suppose that they conducted a critical self-examination, would they find that they were keeping the true aims set out by Mr. Eliot? Such a self-examination would surely give rise to some disquiet.

The suggestion that the universities may be straying a little from their true path raises the question whether they are acting under some compulsion from outside. It is often said that the independence of universities may be endangered by their dependence upon public funds. There is some reason to think that they are changing their ways, and if so, it is by their own choice—though they may have made it unconsciously. It is possible that universities are allowing themselves to become organs of the state—of the welfare state—that they are being subtly conditioned, turning out immediately useful products and being assessed, and assessing themselves, by their productivity in this line.

This possibility deserves discussion. An impressive case can be made out that during the present state of affairs all efforts should be directed to solving our immediate problems. But is this case sound? There are always immediate problems. Is it not the duty of the universities to stand a little away from the immediate stress, the hurly-burly of the day; not because they are careless of it and indifferent to it, but because they believe that only by the continued attention to their own special tasks can the conditions be created in which the stress can best be relieved?

It is impossible to suppose that the public will ever fully understand and appreciate universities which are confining themselves strictly to their proper function. If a single phrase had to be found to describe the true life of a university, it might be said that it is a place where a never-ending informed conversation is in progress, a conversation that leads to no conclusion not in need of revision. But the public is not likely to pay much for places of that sort.