Henry Sidgwick, Litt. D., Trinity. Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy.
The university's exchequer is supplied partly by its endowment, but chiefly by an assessment on the college incomes, a capitation tax on all undergraduates, and the fees attending matriculation, examinations, and the granting of degrees. The examinations are numerous. Every student on entering is required to pass, or to claim exemption from, an entrance examination. In either case he pays £3 to the university, and upon admission to any honor course or "tripos" to qualify for the degree of Bachelor of Arts £3 more is exacted. The income of the university from these examination fees alone amounts to £9,400 per annum, £4,600 of which goes to pay the examiners. In America this is supposed to be a part of the professor's or instructor's duty, no additional remuneration is allowed, and hence it does not become necessary to make an additional tax upon the students' resources. The conferring of degrees is also made a very profitable affair. Each candidate for the degree of B. A. pays out £7 to the voracious 'varsity chest, and upon proceeding to the M. A. a further contribution of £12 is requested. In this way the university makes about £12,000 a year, and, as though this was not sufficient, she requires a matriculation fee of £5 for every student who becomes a member. By this means another annual £5,000 is obtained. It must be remembered that these fees are entirely separate from the college fees. When the £5 matriculation for the latter is taken into consideration and the £8 a term (at Trinity) for lectures, two thirds of which the student does not attend, when it is understood that all this and more does not include living expenses, which are by no means slight, and that there are three terms instead of two, as with us, it will be obvious that Cambridge adheres very closely to the rule that to them only who have wealth shall her refining influence be given. That the greatest universities in existence should render it almost totally impossible for aught but the rich to obtain the advantages of their unusual educational facilities jars with that idea of democracy of learning which an American training is apt to foster. But, as we shall point out later, an aristocracy of learning may also have its uses.
Donald MacAlister, M. A., M. D., St. Johns. Linacre Lecturer of Physics.
With all the revenues the university collects from colleges and students, amounting in all to about £65,000, Cambridge still finds herself poor. Some of the colleges, notably King's and Trinity, are extremely wealthy, but the university remains, if not exactly impecunious, at least on the ragged edge of financial difficulties. The various regius and other professorships, inadequately endowed by the munificence of the crown and of individuals, have each to be augmented from the university chest. The continual repairing of the old laboratories and scientific apparatus, the salaries to lecturers, to proctors, bedells, and other officers, cause a continual drain on the exchequer, which, with the rapidly growing need for larger laboratories and newer apparatus, has finally resulted in an appeal to the country for the sum of half a million pounds.
It has been seen that the drains on a student's pocket are very considerable at Cambridge, owing to the number of perquisites showered by the colleges on their Fellows, and it may appear that this state of things is unjust and wrong. At present Oxford and Cambridge are practically within the reach of only the moneyed population. According, however, to a plausible and frequently repeated theory, it is not the function of these universities to meet the educational needs of the mediocre poor. The writer's critical attitude toward the financial system in vogue at Cambridge is a proper one, only on the assumption that a maximum of education to all classes alike at a minimum of expense is the final cause and desideratum of a university's existence. But if one assumes that Oxford and Cambridge exist for a different purpose, that the chief end they propose to themselves is individual research, and the advancement, not the promulgation, of learning, it must be admitted that their system has little that is reprehensible. According to this standpoint the students only exist by courtesy of the dons (a name for the Fellows), who have a perfect right to impose upon the students, in return for the condescension which is shown them, what terms they see fit. And they argue that this view is the historic one. The colleges were originally endowed solely for the benefit of a certain limited number of Fellows and scholars. The undergraduate body, as it at present exists, is a later growth, whose eventual existence and the importance of which to the university was probably not anticipated by the college founders. Starting with this, the defenders of the present régime would point out, in addition, that there are other English institutions where the poorer classes may be educated, that Cambridge and Oxford are not only not bound to take upon themselves this task, but that they actually subserve a higher purpose and one just as necessary to the development of English science and letters and to the education of the English intellect by specializing in another direction. The good of a philosopher's lifelong reflections, they would say, is not always manifest, but the teachers who instruct the nation's youth are themselves dependent for rational standpoints upon the labor of the greater teacher, and they act as the instruments of communication between the most learned and the unlettered. So Oxford and Cambridge are the sources from whose fountains of wisdom and culture flow streams supplying all the academic mills of Britain, which in their turn are enabled to feed the inhabitants. It would be absurd, they maintain, to insist that the streams and the mills could equally well fulfill the same functions. Cambridge and Oxford instruct just so far as so doing is compatible with what for them is the main end—the furthering of various kinds of research and the offering of all sorts of inducements in order to keep and attract the interested attention of classical butterflies and scientific worms. How well they succeed in this noble ambition is known throughout the civilized world.
Mr. G. H. Darwin, a son of Charles Darwin, has recently had occasion to mention the enormous scientific output of Cambridge University. After saying that the Royal Society is the Academy of Sciences in England, and that in its publications appear accounts of all the most important scientific discoveries in England and most of those in Scotland, Ireland, and other parts of Europe, he goes on to state that he examined the Transactions of this society for three years and discovered that out of the 5,480 pages published in that time 2,418 were contributed by Cambridge men and 1,324 by residents.
In view of these facts, and despite the shortcomings of this university as a teaching institution, it is to be hoped that private generosity will answer her appeal for financial assistance. Her laboratories are a mine of research, and it is in them and in the men who conduct them that Cambridge is perhaps most to be admired.
