CO885-8 — Page 151

381

10

from the Colonies, and I have no doubt, as Mr. Peterson has said, that the post-graduate course would be more generally taken by Colonial students at home. They would go back to the Colonies. At the same time, these Degrees are certainly sought after by a considerable number of students from the American Universities, who come after they have obtained their first Degrees at Harvard or Yale, spend two years at Oxford, and go back to Harvard or Yale holding the Bachelor of Letters, or Bachelor of Science, and then take their higher Degrees. But apart from that course, which would only meet the requirements of a very small number, there is the question of what we can do in the way of providing a more directly professional training for men who have passed through what I may call the undergraduate course, and who Some provision is made in have taken their Bachelor of Arts Degree. the case of the profession of law, by the arrangements for the Bachelor of Civil Laws Degree, which a man who has come from any University, and has taken the Bachelor of Laws Degree outside of Great Britain, may read for and take.

And that

is a Degree which implies not a merely general theoretic knowledge of law, It is a Degree which stands but a certain amount of technical knowledge. higher than it did ten years ago, and this opening of it to other than our own men is a recent act of the University, and was, as a matter of fact, prompted by requests mainly from the United States, but it has only been so short a time in working that it is too early to speak of its success or failure as an experiment. There is this possibility for the man who enters the profession of the law. He may, after two years of undergraduate training, read for a year for the Bachelor of Civil Laws Degree. As regards the profession of medicine I need hardly say that the popula tion of Oxford does not admit of our giving great advantages in the shape done in the big of clinical training. Therefore, clinical study must be towns, but it is possible, and it is done every day, for men to carry on and get over the theoretical part of their medical studies in Oxford itself. As regards teaching, I mean the profession of teaching, which is likely to be a growing one, the University has established in the last few years a regular system of training in the theory and practice of teaching, at the close of the course for which there is This diploma, of course, has acquired an examination, and a diploma is given. quite recently increased importance from the system of registration of teachers which the Board of Education has introduced, and the machinery for carry- ing out the work has been developed. I can only say in conclusion that I think one point of great gain to Oxford from this closer connection with the Colonies, may be that it will stimulate what I think we all wish to see-the attempt to organise in a more definite way what I call the post-graduate studies; studies pursued by men who have taken the Bachelor of Arts Degree before returning to their own country, or entering their professions. A movement has been already started in that direction in the subject of economics. I would repeat that I think it is encourag- ing to find that we are at one on a most important point, namely, the desirability of having from the Colonies not boys, but men, and of giving them, as far as we can, an education which is liberal and general, and which yet should have, as far as possible, some bearing on the profession which they intend to follow.

Sir W. MACGREGOR: My Lord, I understood that there would be a complete curriculum of medicine?

Mr. PELHAM: We give both the Bachelor of Medicine and the Doctor of Medicine Degrees, but owing to the fact that Oxford has a population of only fifty thousand, and the Hospital is small, comparatively good clinical instruction cannot be provided. Our students do the theoretical part of their work at Oxford, and they go to London Hospitals for their clinical work.

Sir WM. MACGREGOR: In the group of Colonies that I represent on the West Coast of Africa, there are, of course, no Universities, but there are a certain number of young men, natives of the country, who do go to Europe, and study in the Universities of this country. How far they would go to Oxford would probably depend upon the monetary considerations, or the financial advantages that they would receive. In Lagos, for example, we have, I think about six or seven native gentlemen as members of the medical profession; about the same number of lawyers, and I presume that the number will be always increasing there, and increasing on the Gold Coast, Sierra

T

to them.

11

Leone, and the other Colonies. At the present time it appears they principally study medicine at the Edinburgh University, and I suspect that they would not alter their present course in that respect unless they had special monetary advantages held out That probably would depend upon what might be done by the Trustees of the Rhodes bequest. I understand that scholarships are to be granted under which, probably, these people would be able to go through their curriculum at Oxford under the Rhodes bequest. If that were so, probably a certain number of our young men would

go to Oxford, more particularly, perhaps, to have a post-graduate course, those that take up the profession of the law for example. Naturally I have no idea how far it is the wish of the Oxford authorities to encourage young men from such Colonies as the West Coast of Africa. That may be for them a separate question to consider by itself; altogether I understand, then, it would be possible for them to have a medical curriculum at Oxford. The law curriculum, I presume, would be complete, as far as they required it. Those are, perhaps, the only two courses that students from the West Coast of Africa would be likely to take up at Oxford, law and medicine. Mr. PELHAM Law and medicine so far have been on the same footing, but in both cases the more technical part of the training must be got elsewhere. For law, a man would naturally go to the Inns of Court.

Sir WM. MACGREGOR: That would not be so in such Colonies as the West Coast. They require a good sound practical education in their different professions and func- tions, and they probably would not care for going in for what might be called a higher course of study in any of those professions. They would confine themselves almost exclusively to the purely practical part.

The VICE-CHANCELLOR: Would the latter include the Civil Service and prepara- tion for Government offices?

Sir WILLIAM MACGREGOR: The Civil Service would not be on a sufficiently large scale to justify their going through a special class at a centre of education like Oxford The higher offices in the Civil Service of all those Colonies are held by young men from this country, many of whom are graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities and elsewhere, but as regards medicine, they are more generally from Edinburgh and Dublin. The District Commissioners, who are, generally speaking, barristers, are, to a considerable extent, men from Oxford and Cambridge, who have gone through an ordinary course at those Universities.

Mr. P. E. MATHESON: Perhaps it would be well to say in answer to what Sir William Macgregor has said about medicine, that supposing the Rhodes Scholarships are applied more widely than they are supposed to be applied, say, to the Crown Colonies, the allowance under a Rhodes Scholarship is a very considerable one-£300 a year, and it would be quite possible, I think, for a student under a Rhodes Scholar- ship to spend three years at Oxford, and take his preliminary medical studies, or his preliminary law studies, and still, if he was a careful man, he would have some money left to spend on his course in London, and that is a possibility which, I think, as we are interested in them, we ought to keep before them.

Sir WILLIAM MACGREGOR: That would be a most important consideration for our young men.

The EARL OF ONSLOW: What do you estimate is the cost of a student per annum, if he is careful and not extravagant?

Mr. MATHESON: Of course, it is a very wide range, but a man who wanted to be careful could live on £200. For a man coming from a distance. there would be the fare and so forth, and his maintenance during the vacation, but for a careful man, who had not these special charges, £150 to £200 ought to be enough.

The EARL OF ONELOW: As a matter of fact, are there not a great many scholar- ships of £200 which are found to be adequate?

Mr. MATHESON: College scholarships are limited to £80. Many young men hold scholarships from schools as well, but I know of a considerable number of scholars living at the rate of £150 to £200 a year.

Mr. PETERSON: May I ask a question of a practical kind before we pass from Clause A! Is Oxford satisfied with the number of students coming from what are called the

19818r

B 2

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 885

8

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO