Volume 1
Report of the royal commissioners appointed to inquire whether any and what kind of new university or powers is or are required for the advancement of higher education in London, together with an appendix.
- Great Britain. University for London Commission.
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Report of the royal commissioners appointed to inquire whether any and what kind of new university or powers is or are required for the advancement of higher education in London, together with an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![Bastian (Q. 718). Appendix to Minutes of Evidence No. 8. Lord Justice Fry (Q. 1028, 9, and 1076- 1079). Ap])endix to Minutes of Evidence No. 41; Papers Nos. 1, 2, 3, 6, 8 and 9. Marquis of Ripon, Canon West- cott, Dr. Ro- berts, H. K. Mooro, (Q. 1750- 1871); and Appendix to Minutes of Evidence Nos. 36 and 37. The degrees of Doctor of Medicine whicli have been conferred by the University of London are strangely few. Dr. Bastian says, For the whole of England during the first 40 years of the existence of the University of London, that is to say, up to the year 1879, it had only granted an annual average of 19 M.B. degrees, whilst even during the last six years it has granted an annual averaere of no more than 25 M.D. degrees. The great majority of London medical students, if they take a degree at all, take it elsewhere than in London, and that is a fact which the highest representatives of the medical profession view with regret. It is injurious, not to the men themselves only, but to the public. 10. In the Senate itself of the University of London, opinions seem to be, as nearly as possible, equally divided upon the medical branch of the question before us. About half of that body, with Professor Huxley at their head, were unwilling, for reasons such as those which we have stated, to oppose the petition of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons for power to grant medical degrees. 11. In addition to these considerations, the educational wants of the largest and most populous city in the world appear to make it a proper seat for a great teaching university. In such a university, the medical faculty would have advantages not perhaps attainable anywhere else in the same degree ; a.nd the faculty of law also might (if not immediately, perhaps at no distant time) receive developments, for which the numbers and concentration of the students and practitioners of law in London offer favourable opportunities. The existing university, as long as it is a mere examining and degree-giving body for students, collegiate and non-collegiate, from all parts of the kingdom, and even from the colonies, is not a London university in any practical sense. 12. Great activity in, and a constantly increasing demand for, teaching of a quality and range more or less academical, has of late years' manifested itself in London : but there is not at present any satisfactory organisation of the various societies and institutions purporting to give teaching of a high class in the metropolis. Various societies and institutions in London profess to give advanced teaching in different subjects, but they are not in any sense confederated. They have sprung up indepen- dently, they pursue separate courses, they take no formal or regular notice one of another; sometimes the same teaching is given in several places, sometimes the teaching which is required is not given anywhere, and such teaching as is given is not, and in the present circumstances can hardly be, arranged so as to produce the best practical results. It is worth while to enumerate some of these institutions :— There are the two important bodies. University College and King's College, which have come most prominently before the Commission:—There are the Government Schools of Science at South Kensington, and the Colleges of the City and Guilds of London Institute; and there are institutions of a less authoritative character, such as the Birkbeck Institution, the City of London College, and the Working Men's College:—There are the great medical schools: — There are the Inns of Court, and their Council of Legal Education, concerned with the teaching of the law:—There are certain ladies' colleges, of which Queen's College and Bedford College are the best known :—And, lastly, there is the system of University Extension Lectures, about which a good deal of interesting evidence has been laid before the Commission. It can hardly be doubted that if these various institutions, and others which might be named, could be co-ordinated under a University as their natural head, which would encourage them to do the work for which they are best fitted, and would reward their work when efficiently done with a public stamp of recognition, the cause of education in the metropolis might gain a great impetus. The representatives of many of them are agreed in desiring that there should be a teaching university in London, and in believing that they might derive from it impulse, regulation, and other benefits; and it has been represented to the Commissioners, by witnesses having good opportunities of knowledge, that from even the less important of these various sources, under proper regulations, a considerable supply of well-qualified candidates for degrees, in arts and science especially, might probably be obtained. Such a University, if it had adequate funds, might itself undertake part, if not the whole, of that teaching of a professorial character which is now given by the efforts of voluntary, and not necessarily per- manent associations; from which kind of work the present University of London was, until recently, supposed to be precluded by a tacit understanding witli University College.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24749448_0001_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
