the experiment of a new municipal university, with the motto, 'Every citizen a scholar.' * * * A university for London should have, by its very existence, a profound educational effect upon the citizens if it be their university, in touch with their daily life, and guiding upward their ambition for their children."

Mr. Bunting would like to see a "metropolitan university" under municipal control. He suggests that King's College should remain a separate institution, devoting itself "to the great interests of theological teaching, and be supplemented by a parallel theological school, representing that other view of theology which is taught at Mansfield College." King's College represents the established church. Mansfield College stands for independency. University education, from its very nature, ought to be public, and free from sectarian control. Theological education, being at the present time chiefly in the interest of particular churches, may not improperly remain upon a private and sectarian basis. Mr. Bunting argues that some rich, powerful, and independent force, representing the interests of the whole metropolis, must take in hand the establishment of a popular London University. More than sixty years ago the project of a nonsectarian university in London was defeated. To-day the opponents of this great cause are less pronounced, but conservative and institutional forces will probably oppose for some time to come a metropolitan and nonsectarian university in England. London and the free spirit of the age must finally prevail. We have had a similar struggle in America for every State university, and there will be continued opposition to every larger project for university education. The democratic and secular spirit of the times will doubtless assert itself more and more strongly in America as in England with regard to educaion. Although good sectarian foundations for the higher education have been laid in Washington and in every State of the American Union, as well as in England, sooner or later there will be in both countries a recognition of a type of university coextensive with the nation.

66

A UNIVERSITY FOR THE PEOPLE.

In the Nineteenth Century for March, 1899, Churton Collins published a very suggestive article entitled "A university for the people." He proposes the combination of University Extension courses with the scientific and technical work of the London polytechnic institutes, of which there are now 11, many of them occupying superb palaces," rivaling the best local colleges in England and America. These institutes now have a total student following of 45,000 pupils, a remarkable increase since 1882, when the total number of evening students in London was under 8,000. Mr. Collins would have at least ten hours weekly in these polytechnics devoted to liberal studies, history, literature, and philosophy. Indeed, the experiment has already been tried successfully at the Regents Street Polytechnic, Southwest London Polytechnic, Goldsmith's Institute at New Cross, Birkbeck Institute, and the City of London College. "A more important step in popular education," says Mr. Collins, "has, I venture to think, never been taken." John Morley and Mr. Balfour, in addresses to the Battersea Polytechnic, have both favored the proposed combination of liberal with technical studies.

This project is one of the latest features of higher popular education in the metropolis of London. The fulfillment of the idea awaits only a more generous policy on the part of the polytechnic institutes themselves where the work has already begun. Mr. Collins says: "The polytechnics would be the most appropriate centers to those teaching. They contain in themselves immense numbers, estimated at the present moment (1899) at about 45,000, and they have a convenient rendezvous for the thickly populated districts which surround them. They are as amply provided with the means and appliances for liberal study as they are for technical and scientific teaching, for they already have literary societies; they

have all of them excellent libraries. People's University."

*

* They are the natural colleges of a

Mr. Collins thinks that the time is soon coming for a department of higher civil education, whereby the interests of the citizen, whether social, intellectual, or material, may be subserved by the combined forces of liberal, scientific, and technical training. He believes, as does Mr. Goschen, that a man needs culture not only as a means of livelihood, but as a means of life. "Nothing," says Mr. Collins, "can be of more concern to a State than the education of its citizens, not simply as it relates to what equips them for the practical duties of life and the means of livelihood, but as it relates to temper, tone, and character."

IX. OXFORD UNIVERSITY EXTENSION.

EARLY BEGINNINGS.

We have seen that as early as 1850 the idea of early University Extension, by means of local colleges, was proposed at Oxford.' The suggestion bore no immediate fruit, but the old idea was revived in 1876, when two Oxford colleges, Balliol and New College, began to make generous appropriations for the support of a university college at Bristol. This new institution owed much to the friendly labors of an Oxford man, Dr. Percival, then Headmaster of Clifton.

In 1877, Mr. Jowett, the master of Balliol College, called the attention of an Oxford Commission to "the considerable movement for secondary adult education then going on in the large towns" and advised the university "to take a little pains about it." He suggested the institution of a central office and a paid secretary for promoting Oxford University Extension. He further suggested that nonresident fellowships might be held by honor men engaged in lecturing or teaching in large towns. All of these excellent ideas have since become realities. Arrangements for local lectures were first authorized in 1878. Oxford, like Cambridge, had simply to utilize and supplement existing machinery. A committee of the academic delegacy of local examinations was empowered to superintend lectures and teaching in the towns of England and Wales. The first secretary appointed for the practical management of the work was Mr. Arthur Acland, whose father, Sir Thomas Acland, had been most helpful in instituting "the parent system of local examinations." The next secretary to the delegacy was Mr. Michael E. Sadler, a well-known lecturer upon economic and social subjects, to whose energy and skillful adaptation of University Extension to the actual needs of the people much of the democratic success of the whole movement in recent years is due.

From the beginning the work of Oxford has been more popular than that of Cambridge. Coming later into the field, after the first enthusiasm of the new movement was spent, the older university realized from experience, perhaps more keenly than did Cambridge, the peculiar limitations of extension work, particularly in the less populous industrial centers and country towns. Here public spirit was not always sufficiently developed for the maintenance of long courses of lectures. Financial difficulties arose in many places. Deficits occurred, and it soon became clear that it was demanding too much from small and rural districts that they should come up to the high standards which Cambridge had set when she first began educational work among prosperous and progressive communities. Oxford had a hard struggle during

In the Quarterly Review for April, 1891, there is a good account of the origin of University Extension at Oxford. The first beginning of the movement is said to have been in the year 1845, when a memorial signed by influential persons was sent to the governing authorities of the university. Complaint was made that university education had not been extended, whether for clergy or laity, in proportion to the growing population of the country, its increasing empire, or deepening responsi bilities.

the first few years of her missionary labor. Mr. Sadler says: "In most towns it was an uphill fight to keep the courses going. In many the work flickered, and then for a time went out. For the great majority of towns in England University Extension was before its time." Some of the noblest educational and social experiments in both England and America were the indirect outcome of the apparent failures of Oxford men in those early years of University Extension.

NEW DEPARTURE IN 1885.

A fresh start was taken by Oxford men in 1885, when they boldly declared in favor of short courses. "In that year," says Mr. Sadler, "the whole movement started forward. Oxford began work on a larger scale, its new vigor being largely owing to the initiative of the present head master of Rugby [Dr. Percival], then president of Trinity College. A conspicuous feature of the Oxford work was its employment of the short-course system. There were naturally serious objections to the policy. Half a loaf may be better than no bread, but towns which can afford a complete system of teaching need not be encouraged to content themselves with one that is incomplete. The offer of a shorter course might relax energies which were really capable of securing a full one. It is undeniable that there was great weight in this view of the question. However, the policy of offering short courses has been amply justified by its results. It has practically brought University Extension within the reach of every town in England.”

Cambridge men have been inclined to criticise Oxford's more popular methods of promoting University Extension, but a happy compromise seems to have been reached in the practical operation of the two systems. Cambridge lecturers frequently consent to give half courses, that is, only six lectures, where circumstances require such limitation. Oxford gives full courses wherever she can, and both Oxford and Cambridge reserve their certificates for full unit courses.

TRAINING OF LECTURERS.

The success of English University Extension has turned chiefly upon the ability of the lecturers. It is considered very important that incompetent and poorly trained men should be kept out of the lecture field, for, in some cases, good and hopeful centers of educational work have been set back or utterly discouraged by a disappointing course of some ill-prepared lecturer. Accordingly, in England, university authorities early took in hand the preliminary training and proper testing of candidates for local lectureships.

He

Mr. Robert A. Woods,' in his chapter on "University Extension," says: Any young university man may apply for an appointment as lecturer. His college record is examined. He must have had experience in speaking in public. must be thoroughly acquainted with the extension system. Finally, he must deliver to a private audience the course of lectures he proposes to give. If all tests are satisfactorily passed, a small sum of money is voted to send him to some typical centers, in order that he may see senior lecturers at their work.

It is an important fact, and the promoters of University Extension do not forget it, that the extension lecturer needs to be of a different type from the resident lecturer at a university. He can not expect to find his hearers already interested in his subject, but must begin by arousing them to its significance. His way of presenting it must be very clear and simple. He must have some of the traits of a public speaker, so as to hold the attention of a general audience. He needs to have a turn for organization, in order to bring up to their highest efficiency the centers to which he goes. Not the least important thing is that he should enter his work with a desire for the improvement of social conditions and a belief that University Extension may be made a valuable factor in bringing about the good change.

One of the best educational results of actual experience as a University Extension lecturer is a dawning consciousness of his own ignorance of the subject which he is

1 English Social Movements, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891.

undertaking to teach. A well-known extension lecturer on English literature said that when he began his public work, he was amazed to discover, from the class conferences and weekly exercises, that many of his pupils in English towns and villages knew more about certain literary topics than he did himself. He admitted, however, that this fact was not very surprising when he considered that the English universities did so little for the training of their students to a good knowledge of English literature, while many English men and women in the common walks of life were earnestly devoting themselves to this special study. Political economy is another of those subjects in which a university man often finds his weakness when he attempts to lecture to workingmen and manufacturers, who are often well versed in special branches of this wide domain.

A second good result of the training process in actual extension work is the attainment, by university men, of a more intelligent sympathy with the common people, with the very heart of England. College-bred men who have traveled throughout their own country, who have observed closely the modes of life in English towns and villages, who have met men and women of various classes, who have made friends with artisans and miners, and who have entered their homes and domestic circles-such men know England and her people better than do the dons and student-gentry of Oxford. No American who has met varying types of English university men can fail to be impressed with the generous, humanitarian, and truly democratic spirit which characterizes an extension lecturer. This type is more truly English, in a national sense, than are the ultra forms of Anglomania. The same broad and sympathetic views are conspicuous in the young Scotchmen who have entered the national and international fields of educational, social, or religious endeavor. There is a missionary spirit among educationists and extensioners. Professors Drummond and Geddes and Messrs. Roberts, Moulton, Sadler, Mackinder, and Herbertson have made the Scotch and English student types at once more national and more cosmopolitan.

A third result of training as a public teacher in a larger academic field is the favorable reaction upon the lecturer himself. He becomes a better university instructor by reason of his experience with the people. Like the fabled wrestler, he gains in strength from contact with mother earth. From necessity he has learned to be simple and clear in his language and mode of instruction. He has acquired the rare faculty of telling what he knows in a way that is at once intelligible and interesting. College professors are not always lucid. They are sometimes positively dull. Students quickly discover the superiority of the new type of academic lecturer, who has acquired some knowledge of the world and of the art of public speaking. College graduates who have had experience in extension work recognize in themselves the advantage which they have gained over their former scholastic heaviness. The conduct of one or two courses of popular instruction shows a man his defects and limitations.

A suggestive story is told of an extension lecturer in England, who was also a college instructor. When urged to present one of his favorite academic subjects in an extension course, he declined, on the ground that he had not thought out the matter clearly enough for the people, although he was lecturing upon the subject at college. "You know," he said, "anything goes down at college." Old professors and routine lecturers understand this fact only too well. Their unfortunate students are obliged to follow ancient academic courses in preparation for examinations. The old school or cloister method of teaching is thus "protected." The new school, on the contrary, represents free trade in the academic world. Under the old system, unfit professors sometimes survive. The dead hand restrains the living. In the larger world of academic competition and university extension only the fittest survive. The law of life becomes supreme. Thus, in training graduates for the public service in matters of higher education, the universities are preparing the way for a more efficient class of college professors.

OXFORD INSTRUCTIONS.

Oxford extension lecturers are urged by the delegates, who have supervision of the work, to pay particular attention to the formation of classes. Lecturers should encourage students to remain after the lecture and receive further instruction on points which were not made quite clear in the public course. Lecturers are instructed to remind their students that, in order to obtain admission to the final examination, they must attend not less than two-thirds of the whole number of classes held after lecture and not less than two-thirds of the whole number of weekly exercises. At the conclusion of his course the lecturer prepares a list of students qualified to take the final examination and sends the list to the office of the delegates in Oxford. The lecturer is expected to indicate in this list the names of students whom he regards as eligible for distinction. This honor is awarded only to those who are recommended to the delegates by both the lecturer and the examiner. In the preparation of the examination paper the examiner is guided by the printed syllabus used by the lecturer. If the latter has departed in any way from his plan of instruction, he is expected to inform the delegates. The lecturer makes a report to the local committee as well as to the delegates. He reports the average number of students attending the lecture, the average number attending the class, and the average number of weekly exercises, and any other facts of interest or importance. He is expected to encourage the formation of students' associations and to cooperate in every possible way with the local management. The increasing number of written exercises which the lecturer is required to look over has led to this resolution, passed at a lecturers' conference: "That the lecturer should receive additional payment for the looking over and correction of weekly papers above a certain number, e. g., an average of twenty-one per lecture."

To Americans it is an interesting illustration of the survival of medieval custom in University Extension that lecturers are expected to wear academic gowns, unless they see special reasons for the contrary. It was an interesting sight for a Baltimore university man to see in a Quaker meetinghouse in that city an English churchman, the Rev. Hudson Shaw, dressed in the scholastic Oxford gown and lecturing to a mixed audience of men and women, including some worldlings and a few Johns Hopkins students. Some of the good Quakers were dressed in Quaker drab.

PRINTED LECTURES.

66

For the benefit of isolated students who can not attend a local course of University Extension lectures Oxford men early devised short educational courses of printed lectures which are circulated among individuals and read in local groups. For example, in 1887 six lectures were printed at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, on "The worker and his welfare" for members of workingmen's cooperative societies. The first lecture was introductory and contained a discussion of the "Action of the state and public opinion," and also a good list of books on cooperation and other topics referred to in the lectures. The subject of the second lecture was 'Association and cooperation;" of the third, "The intelligence of the worker;" of the fourth, "Cooperative production;" of the fifth, "Industrial partnership;" and of the sixth, "Pauperism," and the conclusion of the whole course. Each printed lecture was accompanied by a list of questions well calculated to stimulate inquiry and discussion among workingmen. These lectures were circulated fortnightly in 17 towns, in 1887, and were extensively read by groups of workingmen, who talked over among themselves the subject-matter of the course. This practice, early begun, has been continued in varying forms in both England and America. Chautauqua made it widely popular in this country and great publishing houses have given a large circulation to both popular and academic courses of lectures. The press is now perhaps the most ED 99-64