The Functions of Universities

Abstract

As it is most desirable that students of all classes should, as far as possible, be in contact with one another during the impressionable years of training, it is eminently desirable that schools of engineering should be connected with Universities. It is distinctly contrary to public policy that the present denominational education of students of different professions in special seminaries, whether they are ecclesiastical, or medical, or engineering, should be encouraged. The existing separation of professional and commercial education is most mischievous, and is very largely due to compulsory Greek. Anent this, all that I said was that the danger of a Pagan revival was the best argument for compulsory Greek; I did not say it was a good argument. About going to Colleges and Universities, I did not say that the student should go to a College and not to a University, if he ever had time and ability to benefit by University training. Very few can do this, hardly any undergraduates ever do; and what I deprecate is that University Professors should be expected to waste their time in making cripples run—that is what College teachers and private coaches are paid for doing. Some Universities, as, for example, that of Dublin, are too poor to pay double sets of teachers, but that is their misfortune, and should not be a precedent for a rich country like England, nor for the wealthiest city in the world, like London.