EDUCATION AND EMPIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 97, 21 October 1926, Page 16

EDUCATION AND EMPIRE

THE IMPERIAL CONGRESS

PROBLEMS DISCUSSED

NEED FOB CO-ORDINATION BETWEEN ALL PARTIES.

While the minds of politicians, economists, and others interested in the furtherance of Imperial unity are being turned to the Imperial Conference and the Keonomic Conference, the Third Imperial Congress on Higher Education has been meeting at Cambridge, ■writes Professor J. Alexander Gunn. in the Melbourne "Argus." Representatives of all parts of the British Empire met there ia July to discuss Imperial problems of an educational character. This congress followed one held in London in 1912 and a second at Oxford in 1921. It has become a feature of Imperial life, as important in its sphere as the political and ■ economic conferences. The results of the first congress were a basis for Imperial co-ordination, for it was then that the Bureau of the Universities of the British Empire came into being. A central council was set up under the joint chairmanship of two university men with a thorough know- j ledge of Imperial educational problems, Sir George Adam Smith and Dr. J. G. Adami. Sir George Adam Smith is a noted Scottish theologian and scholar, who for many years hag been the honoured principal of the Aberdeen University. Dr. Adami, whose death has lately been announced, was a distinguished pathologist whose work every medical student should know. He had been since the war vice-chancellor or principal of the University of Liverpool, which, reared largely on Scottish traditions, found, like the Scotch colleges, that a ful'-timt principal was a valued asset and by personal influence brought in much revenue,to the university. Dr. Adami was engaged when death took him in a campaign to collect £1,000,000 for his university, and he had already obtained about £500,----000. Few men had a more truly Imperial vision of education. He himself was trained in Manchester, London, Breslau, Paris, and Cambridge, and for many years he occupied the chair of pathology at the great Canadian University of M'Gill. In the war he commanded the Canadian Medical Forces. His loss is great, not only to medicine, but also to the cause of Imperial education. Educational advancement is assured in universities which possess men with such power of leadership. Through men like Sir George Adam Smith, Dr. Adami, and other members of the council, such as Sir Michael Sadler, Sir Henry Hadon, and Principal Reichel (lately on the New Zealand University Commission with Mr. Frank Tate), and Dr. F. Wilson (representing Australia), the people of England become more convinced than ever of) the value of their universities and of the wisdom of supporting them.to the utmost. WORK OF IMPERIAL BUREAU. This Imperial council established the bureau, which in turn produced from its London office in Busiell square the first essential to co-operative work, "An Imperial Universities Year Book." Until the publication of this valuable annual much information was beyond reach at all, or had to be sought in copies of calendars of distant universities, whose officials had often forgotten to forward them to sister universities. In the Imperial Year Book there was made available not only informaC.on regarding the personnel of staffs, but also regarding subjects, fees, and conditions of entrance, important points for students coming from overseas. It was made apparent that there were grave inequalities of standard, in entrance, and that students from Australia with degrees might find themselves refused matriculation because of their ignorance of foreign languages or branches of mathematics. Even a selected Rhodes scholar might find English and Scottish universities closed against him, and graduates with an equipment solely in technical subject*/might have to resit matriculation. % TJie year book, in short, Tevealed grave Imperial problems, which, in vi«w of the increasing need for Dominion students to obtain extra training outside" their own land, made the position the more alarming. The year book, now in its twelfth year of publication, Bervea as a guide to the universities as a-whole, and, with the bureau, co-ordinates the relations of universities to one another. The introductory summary of the state of university development in each Dominion is extremely valuable.. The year book and the bureau are fundamental facts behind the conference, providing it with data for comparison and for increasing Imperial university co-operation. As thp Secretary of State for the Dominions (Mr. Amery) remarked at the opening luncheon: "The Empire owes an inestimable debt to its universities, not merely as centres of learning, but a* centres where the ideal of public ser vice is set high, and whence so many of those who have helped to build it have drawn the inspirations upon which their life work has been based." UNIVERSITIES' &ANGERS. The conference opened under the presidency of the Earl of Balfour, Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, who in his opening speech touched on modern difficulties in university life. The first of these was the need for money. Education, especially in the sciences, is now much more expensive than formerly. The second was the need for independence of political control. There was danger, always resisted strenuously by British universities, of their coming under the power of the State Departments of Education, a disaster to be avoided at all costs in the interests of educational freedom. Another 'danger was that of too early and too narrow a specialisation, particularly in technical and vocational subjects. Sir Matthew* Nathan, an .Australian delegate, cited the revenue of Columbia University, New York, as an instance of American expenditure on university education. The revenue of this one university reached for 1926 the sum of 11,250,000 dollars (£2,250,----000). The British Empire, he pointed out,'could not afford to lag far behind these developments, particularly as the demand for. university education had risen by 50 per cent, in Great Britain, amounting to 43,000 full-time students. The most urgent demand, however, is in Scotland, which has by far the highest number of students a head of population. One quarter of the university students in Great Britain are in the four Scottish Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and St. Andrews. The demand for university education in Scotland is almost twice as strong as it is in England. ' NEED TOB RESEARCH. Two important problems before the conference were the poor physique of many students ana the need for ensuring a more general participation in athletics, and the necessity for stimulating research, especially by the PhD. degree. Other matter* were common standards of examination, permission for a degree course to be taken, as in Ger-many,-by attendance at one or two universities, and encouragement of exchange of students and teachers throughout the Empire. From the discussions of the conference it is apparent that if the Empire is not to fall behind Germany, France, and the United States, extensive provision for research muat be made. Few, except workers m zmeaNh them* etas, really.

understand what this means. Professor Newton, of the Chair of Imperial History in London, in a book compiled for the recent Wembley Exhibition, "The Universities and Educational Systems of the Empire," remarked that when some of the universities were vicing with one another in advertisement to attract the research student, of whom they desired to know mote, it was no uncommon thing to find the salubrity of the climate or the opportunities for yachting insisted upon, without a word about the equipment of the laboratories, the character of the library and its contents, or the financial ability of the University. Press to publish research work done. There cannot be valuable research work without adequate provision, and jio university can maintain its life without research, nor can the Empire progress without it as rapidly as other countries which have a more profound faith in education and in the functions of a university in relation to progress. The Empire Congress insists upon the importance to the Empire of research on such subjects ■as cancer, industrial development, Imperial political relations, Imperial law, social welfare, agricultural, and tropical medicine. Regarding the important relation of research to teaching, Dr. Hill, the secretary of the Empire Bureau, . put the matter very clearly and correctly when he said that "Where there is no zeal for research, there is no vitality in teaching."