Though but recently established, the opportunities for special study and for advanced instruction are well organized, and offer the choice of a wide range of subjects. The curriculum provides both for the philological and for the literary study of the English Language. Candidates are examined in (1) portions of certain prescribed English authors, to be studied with reference to the forms of the language; as examples of literature; and in their relation to the history and thought of the period to which they belong; (2) in the history of the English Language and Literature, demanding a thorough study of philology as well as of the history of literary criticism. In addition, the candidate who aims at a first or second class in the Final Examination must offer one of a list of nine or ten special subjects in philology and English literature. The examination requirements demand very wide reading, as well as a thorough study of some special period of English literature, or of some special subject in philology.
Modern Languages.
Complete courses of instruction are given in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and the Scandinavian languages; instructions will also be provided for in other European languages, if called for. All the Lecturers and Professors are prepared to give special instruction. A recognized authority is appointed from time to time to deliver a public lecture on some subject of modern language or comparative literature. Candidates reading for this ‘School’ are not required to offer more than one language. They will be examined in ‘the language as spoken and written at the present day’, in certain prescribed texts, in the history, philology, and the literature of the language offered. ‘This will include the history of criticism and style in prose and verse, and the history, especially the social history, of the corresponding country or countries of Europe.’ In addition the candidate has the choice of certain optional subjects as prescribed in the Examination Statutes.
Final Pass Schools.
For the sake of completeness, brief reference may be made to the Final Examinations in the Pass Schools. The subjects of the examination are divided into a number of groups, each containing a certain number of subjects, e. g. one group contains Classical subjects, another Modern subjects, another Mathematics, &c. Candidates must satisfy the examiners in three subjects; as a rule not more than two subjects may be taken from any one Group. The examination in these subjects may be taken separately, i. e. it is not necessary to take all of them in the same Term, and no limitations (except by his College) are placed on the number of the Pass-man’s efforts to pass his ‘Groups’. In the course of time the University examiners are said to be able to recognize familiar faces in the Pass Schools with comparative ease—some cynics say, with ill-concealed pleasure.
Graduate study.
The residential feature of the Oxford system, on the one hand, and the stress laid on culture for its own sake, on a liberal education, on the other, has not been very favourable to the growth of special or graduate work. The Oxford life makes heavy demands on the student’s time. An ideal of culture and scholarship (in the English sense of the word) will not have much in common with the demands of technical and professional training, with ‘specialization’ and the scientific spirit. Conservative as Oxford is, it has not shut its doors to the spirit of the times. Despite Ruskin, ‘science’ has made decided inroads and is to-day firmly entrenched in Oxford soil. The new University Professorships and Lectureships were another sign of the times. The extension and perfecting of the examination system to meet the new conditions, and the absence of any demand for ‘research’ work, discouraged the growth and development of the Professorial system, and most of the Professorships suffered by atrophy of functions and became part of the larger inter-collegiate system. This must not be interpreted to mean that all work became undergraduate in character. No greater mistake could be made. As has been said, there is no hard and fast line at Oxford where undergraduate work ends and graduate work begins. But it is true that, apart from the work in Natural Science and Medicine, Oxford makes little pretence of teaching method as method. By an extension of the tutorial system, it substitutes the direct personal contact between the Professor and the student. There are advanced lectures, to be sure, but they are purely formal. Wherever there has been a demand for it, Professors have always been ready to organize small classes for special study—on the model of seminars, or even to accommodate their lectures to the needs of advanced students. There exists to-day a very substantial framework on which is being organized an efficient Graduate School. New departments are not created at Oxford ‘by act of legislature’, nor are they grafted on to the system. They must be a growth—a natural growth from within.
With the institution of the new ‘Research degrees’ in Letters and Science[60], a good beginning has been made in the way of a school of purely post-graduate study. Recently, also, certain endowments for research have been established or reconstituted. The institution of ‘Research’ Fellowships, as apart from the ordinary teaching Fellowships held by College Tutors and Lecturers, is but another indication of this new spirit and of the new demands. Moreover, many College Tutors are working in special fields or engaged in research, and are always ready to advise the student or to give special individual instruction.
The most valuable feature in the new system is that ‘the student enjoys the advantage of being brought into close contact with those who have a first-hand acquaintance with the department of knowledge to which he is devoting himself, and are ready to give him the benefit of their experience in researches similar to his own. Professors and Readers in the University have gained a new responsibility by being brought into relations with the most earnest students in their respective branches of learning.’[61]