University Education in Ireland

by Samuel Haughton

University education in France pleases the doctrinaire, just as parterres of flowers of similar hue please the eyes of the gardener; while the Universities of Germany delight the thinker, as the graceful forms and varied colours of the flowers of some tropical forest please the traveller, whose instinctive taste prefers the charms and grace of nature to the symmetry and rules of art.

The experiment of the union of different Colleges in a common University has succeeded in France, in Oxford, and in Cambridge, in consequence of the similarity of the Colleges united together; but such an experiment attempted in Ireland would fail, as certainly as an attempt to unite Oxford and Cambridge into one University would fail.

We possess in Ireland three distinct types of Collegiate education, of which may be cited as examples—Trinity College, in Dublin; the Roman Catholic College of Carlow, and Queen’s College, in Belfast. These Colleges represent, respectively, the religious Protestant type, the Roman Catholic type, and the secular or mixed type, of Collegiate discipline and training. Any person of education acquainted with Ireland knows the impossibility of fusing such distinct elements in a common crucible; and yet each system, in its way, is excellent, and will produce good fruits, if left to develope itself, and not forced upon those who conscientiously dissent from its fundamental principles.

Let us suppose, however, the experiment tried by persons only partially acquainted with education, and with the condition of Ireland—and by such only could it be attempted—then it is easy to see that success could be obtained only at the expense of lowering the standard of education.

It is plain that one or other of two things would happen: either the University Senate would be composed of persons altogether independent of the Colleges, and appointed by the State, or it would consist, as in Oxford and Cambridge, of heads of Colleges and persons representing their varied interests.

In the first case supposed we should witness the painful and degrading spectacle of Irish Colleges submitted to the rule of State-appointed, perhaps, State-paid Governors, who, under the name of an University Senate, would prescribe the curriculum for degrees, appoint Examiners, and confer the titles awarded by those Examiners.

It is not possible to suppose that a Senate appointed by an authority outside the Colleges, and consisting of persons removed from the details of University Education, would be competent to decide the weighty and important questions that must come before them; in fact, a Senate constituted as I have supposed, in discussing questions of education, would be about as likely to come to a wise decision as a collection of shoemakers speculating on the structure of a watch, and making proposals for its improvement, who will certainly destroy the delicate machinery they are unable to understand, unless they have the sagacity to call in the watchmakers to their aid.

It might be imagined that the standard of education could be maintained by such a system, on the hypothesis that a State-nominated Senate would always appoint competent Examiners; but in such a case those Examiners would themselves become the University, and would regulate the value of the degrees conferred by it, and the country could have no guarantee that the standard of education would continue to be maintained; for this would be to suppose, on the part of successive Governments, a purity in their appointment of Senators which no rational man expects will ever be found outside the boundaries of the kingdom of Laputa.

If the Senate of the National University were composed of State officials, they would feel themselves bound to maintain the interests of all the Colleges committed to their care, and it would be impossible to maintain the standard of Degrees at a point higher than the attainments of the weakest College in the partnership, whose defective standard would regulate that of the University Degree, just as the sailing of the slowest tub in the squadron regulates the manœuvres of the entire fleet.

If, on the other hand, the Senate of the National Irish University should be composed, after the model of Oxford and Cambridge, of the heads and representatives of the various Irish Colleges, although liberty of education might be preserved, the standard of the degrees would become degraded by the simple operation of a natural law easy to explain.