The Press.
London, England, 1853-09-03 00:00:00

UNIVERSITY REFORM.—CAMBRIDGE.
TO THE EDITOR OF " THE PRESS."
August 31, 1853.
Sir,—There are many points in the letter of your
correspondent of last week on the subject of Univer
city Reform in which I, for one, cannot agree.
The main points discussed are the length and
continuity of residence at the university, and the
period of life at which Ruch residence should take
place. Your correspondent, if 1 understand him
aright, would wish the residence of a student at the
university to commence in ordinary cases at 17 years
of ago or thereabouts, and to terminate at 19 or 20.
It appears to me that the arguments by which
your correspondent endeavours to support his propo-
sition are entirely inconclusive, and in Rome instance-
not grounded on actual facts. I was myself in former
days a fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge.
WWI resident as a private tutor for some few years
after taking my degree, and since that time I have
been employed in private tuition in the country, and
as the head master of an endowed grammar school,
so that I have at least had opportunities of knowing
something concerning the subjects to which your
correspondent alludes.
He says that boys intended for the university
ruerally leave school at 16&, or thereabouts. In
this 1 differ from him entirely. I think that upon
inquiry be will find that about two thirds of those
who come into residence at the university, at the age
of 19, have come directly from aehool; and that, of
the remaining third, at least one halt have been
regularly preparing for residence with some private
tutor. Ido not mean to assert that so large a pro-
portion have been really working, but that they have
been outwardly adopting means to prepare themselves
for the end which they have in view; and their work
for the last. two or three years will, in the majority of
cases, have been more steady than it was for two
years preceding the ago of 17, when your correspon-
dent would wish that they should commence their
university course. The fact of the case, therefore,
seems to me to be, that the university does now what
he proposes that it should, namely, continue educa-
tion from the point where school-teaching leaves it,
with this difference, that it takes it up at a higher
point. Then as to those who wish to give their sons
an academical education, but who are deterred from
so doing by the lateness of the time at which they
would, in ordinary cases, have completed their uni-
versity course, I know nothing which prevents such
persons from doing now what your correspondent
would wish to induce all to do, namely, send their
sons to the university at an earlier age. If they do
not intend to compete for honours, they may easily
obtain an ordinary degree ; but,if they should be of a
more ambitious turn, it would surely be far more rea-
sonable that they themselves should sacrifice one or
two years of the duties of after life, than that the
standard of university requirement for honours should
be materially lowered to suit their particular owe.
If they entered upon university life at 17 or there-
abouts, they would thus, on the commissioners' plan,
have completed their course by 20 years of age. And
in discussing this subject it ought never to be for-
gotten that the age at which university studies are
now generally pursued is peculiarly well adapted to
the case of that large body of the students who are
designed for the ministry of the Church.
Again, 1 do not think that any of that feeling of
distaste for study, and anxiety to be free from educa-
tional discipline, which your correspondent pictures
to himself as seiziug upon young men at the age of
21, actually exists. All those to whom he alludes as
having commenced real life,—the naval lieutenant, the
soldier, the attache, the clerk, or junior partner in
some mercantile concern,—are surely quite as amena-
ble to anthority immediately above them as the
young student of the university himself.
'Than, again, as to the majority not designing to
read 14 bantam:, T think that your correspondent is
much mistaken. The honour lists are now almost
as large as the poll; and any one at all acquainted
with university affairs must know how many young
men (some from one cause, and some from mealier)
abandon the pursuit of honours in the course of their
university career. I should say that about four out
of every five freshmen intend to attempt something
more than a mere pass degree. And of these few
men who come up to the university simply intending;
to take a pass degree, 1. think it will be found that
the majority consist of those who came from an ire •
pression (and 1 think a just one) subsisting in the
minds of those who send them, that in a university
course there are advantages to be gained besides
those which are directly connected with the studies
of the place. The profit to be derived from extensive
association with other young men of similar age and
station is by no means slight. Narrow prejudices are
removed—a general enlargement of ideas is produced
—new interests, unconnected with the immediate lo•
cality of home, spring up in the mind—and those
rough corners and angles of character which every
man in early life more or less brings with him into
society are smoothed down and removed. The place
itself, too, is full of associations with the past
that it would be strange, indeed, if a young man